


Bending Conventions

by kangaroo2010



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Family, Fluff and Humor, Humor, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Romance, Swearing, Team as Family, Zutara Week, Zutara Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-18 13:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15486927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangaroo2010/pseuds/kangaroo2010
Summary: They are Zuko and Katara, the couple that should have been, that couple that is, deep down in our hearts. Their bond is eternal, and their stories are endless.These are some of those stories.Written for Zutara Week 2018





	1. First Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sokka's got a lot on his mind. Ba Sing Se has fallen, Aang is hovering on death's door, and Zuko has officially joined the Gaang, and as if all of that wasn't enough, he's pretty sure he just witnessed his sister's first kiss.
> 
> This can be read on its own, but if you want to check out some of my other stuff, might I suggest scoping out the short pieces that make up the backstory to this piece, which were originally written for Zutara Month 2015: Royalty, Caught, In His/Her Shoes, Whisper, and Survive. Find them under A Little Bit of This, and a Little Bit of That.

**First Kiss**

“SO,” TOPH BEGAN, AS SHE PICKED BITS OF DIRT FROM BENEATH HER FINGERNAILS WITH HER TEETH.

            Sokka slumped deeper into the pilot’s bench, Appa’s reins resting lightly in fists that opened and closed, opened and closed, without the slightest bit of input from his conscious mind. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

            There was no response for a few moments. A perverse, mocking imitation of hope began to bloom in his heart, which felt weird, because his heart was currently residing somewhere in his left boot. Maybe, _just maybe,_ Toph was going to follow _so_ up with something less…less…less _troubling_ than what was currently preying on his mind. Maybe, for example, she would finally admit to him that she was gay, and start regaling him with tales of wild, all female orgies. Or perhaps she would pop glass lenses out of her eyes and inform him that she was, in fact, _not_ blind, but had only pretended to be blind to fuck with him, him and _only_ him, because at that moment Aang would spring forth from his coma and everyone would link arms and say, _Surprise!_

            _Or maybe I’ll blink, and we’ll be back in the Si Wong Desert, and this will all turn out to have been nothing but a cactus juice-induced hallucination!_ He chewed on that idea for a moment, rolling his head side-to-side, the back of the pilot’s bench digging into the base of his skull. Sure, that particular possibility was pretty far-fetched, but on the other hand, it made a bizarre kind of sense. And what had Aunt Wu said? _Your life will be full of torment, most of it self-inflicted, I’m afraid._ The events of the past day-or-so were _exactly_ the kind of thing his subconscious would come up with while tripping on drugs.

            _Though,_ he pondered, his brain seeing a chance for digression and latching onto it like a drowning man hurls himself at a piece of driftwood, _could cactus juice be called a drug? Sure, it has drug-like qualities, I could **definitely** see how someone could get addicted to it, and its effects were remarkably similar to what I’ve had been told opium is like, **but on the other hand,** I’ve only encountered it in its natural state, and what is a drug, really? Is it any substance that has drug-like effects, or is it only substances that have been artificially altered, enhanced, and/or processed by humans? Furthermore-_

“So,” Toph finally continued, having switched from picking dirt from her nails with her teeth to digging dirt out from between her teeth with her nails, which seemed rather inefficient to Sokka, “interesting day.”

            _Fuck._ Sokka fixed his eyes firmly on the horizon, allowing himself to marvel at the way the glow of the setting sun behind them interacted with the storm clouds looming to the southwest, otherwise known as _my right_. “Like I said,” he spat out through gritted teeth, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

            “I mean,” Toph continued, having turned her attentions to her other hand, “I still can’t believe Ba Sing Se actually fell! Sure, I wasn’t overly attached to the place, I’m from the southern part of the Earth Kingdom, remember, and we’ve rebelled against Ba Sing Se more times than I care to count. Still, though, it’s pretty trippy.”

            Sokka actually noticed his hands tightening around Appa’s reins this time. “Toph, seriously, if you’re going to ignore that I don’t want to talk about it, then at least have the common decency to hurry up and get it over with.” As he said this, Sokka did his best to ignore the fact that _Toph Bei Fong_ and _common decency_ had never had a particularly close relationship, instead choosing to focus on his eternal mantra: _I may be a fool, but even fools are right occasionally._

            “Do you think the Emperor is going to be okay? Sure, I wasn’t terribly impressed by him, none of us were, dude has the heartbeat of a librarian, but surely even Ozai would hesitate to just outright kill him.”

            Sokka shrugged, wondering how it was he kept finding himself in these situations. _It’s Katara’s fault, somehow, I just know it is._ “Maybe they’ll give the throne to Bosco.”

            Toph threw back her head and did her best imitation of a laugh. Being well-versed in the nuances of Toph’s often sarcastic laughter, Sokka gave the effort a three-out-of-ten. “That’s pretty good!” she said, leaning over to punch him in the arm. _Hey, I didn’t yelp like a little girl this time! Progress!_ “Not gonna lie, I’d pay good money to see that.”

Sokka spotted another chance for digression and leapt for it. “Do you even have good money anymore, though? Or any money, what with the government fallen and everything?”

            Toph waved the possibility away. “Trust me, my father will manage to land on both feet. He’s probably swapping out all the books in the library for Fire Nation classics as we speak.”

            Sokka grimaced. “Nice guy.”

            Toph shrugged. “Eh, at this point, can’t say I blame him. The government in Ba Sing Se stopped caring about anything outside of the central provinces _years_ ago; my family has had to take care of Gaoling on their own for a long time.”

            Sokka turned his head to Toph, looked her up and down, and, as usual, could find nothing beyond her usual _Mask of Smirking Coolness._ His sister was the only one who could get behind that mask, and his sister was currently busy trying to keep Aang alive with the help of…the help of…

            _The help of…_

“I have to admit,” Toph said, “even I was surprised when Zuko turned on his sister like that. Totally didn’t see that coming.”

            “Uh huh,” Sokka muttered, declining to point out that he had called Zuko’s inevitable heel-face turn _ages_ ago. _Which is a big moment of personal growth for me, really, passing on the opportunity to brag._

_Whatever, you’re just filing it away for later because bringing it up now will only prolong this torture._

_Shut your trap, Inner Sokka, I’m basking in a moment of mature, adultlike growth, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me._

_You once put on a skirt to get in a girl’s pants._

_**No,** I put on a skirt to further my training as a warrior and deepen and expand my own personal growth._

_Bullshit._

_Also, Suki wasn’t wearing any pants, so your point is invalid._

_…alright, you got me._

_Thought so._

“Are you even listening?”

            Sokka blinked, tearing his eyes away from the horizon. “Oh, sorry, I was just…uh…you know, looking at those storm clouds, you know, trying to figure out if we have to worry about them, Appa’s pretty tired, don’t know if he can handle a storm.”

            “Uh huh…those storm clouds?” Toph replied, pointing to the northwest, her finger indicating the _opposite_ end of the horizon from the actual storm clouds.

            “No, those ones over…over… _gods-dammit, Toph_.”

            Toph giggled, looking obscenely pleased with herself. “Don’t worry, Snoozles,” she said, patting him on the shoulder, “you’ll get it down one day.”

            Sokka replied to that with a few choice obscenities muttered under his breath, flipping Toph the bird ( _for all the good it does_ ) and slumping deeper into the bench.

            “What was that?” Toph asked, making a big show out of cupping a hand to her ear.

            “Kiss my ass, Toph.”

            “Love you, too, Sokka.” She took a deep breath, let it out, before propping a foot on one knee and going hunting for dirt under her toenails, a process made all the weirder by the fact that she did it all without looking down at what she was doing. _Sure,_ Sokka thought to himself, ignoring her actions and focusing on the horizon, _intellectually, I know she doesn’t need to see what she’s doing, she **can’t,** actually, but it’s still weird to see sometimes. Like that time that-_

“Anyways,” Toph said, “like I was saying, just…really weird day, you know? Just…absolutely bizarre _week,_ all-in-all. I mean, my father hires two goons to kidnap me, I accomplish what generations of scholars and inventors have failed to do before me and unlock the secrets of bending metal, I get my lone, blind, petite self back into Ba Sing Se on my own, pretty much single-handedly break into the Crystal Catacombs, sure, you and Aang and the Old Man helped, but you would’ve been helpless without me, Ba Sing Se falls, the Fire Nation pretty much wins the War, Aang gets zapped, the Old Man gets captured, Zuko joins our side, and, oh yeah, your sister pulled Zuko onto Appa and stuck her tongue so far down his throat that I’m surprised she didn’t choke him to death.”

            Sokka shut his eyes, desperate to keep the truth of that image from imprinting itself into his permanent memories. “How could you even tell that’s what she did?”

            Toph scoffed. “Hey, I’m blind, but I’m not _that_ blind. I leave that level of willful obliviousness to you, Snoozles.”

            “Toph? Remember earlier, when I told you to kiss my ass?”

            “Yeah?”

            “Well, I changed my mind. Instead of kissing my ass, just go ahead and go fuck yourself.”

            “No problem! Got any cucumbers laying around?”

            Sokka smacked a hand to his face. “Toph, for La’s sake…”

            Toph chuckled. “Alright, alright, seriously, though, did Sugar Queen saving her prince _look_ as badass as it sounded?”

            Sokka tried his best to ignore how that rescue _ended_ , and instead focused on the lead-up. “It was, actually. Fit for a song, if I’m honest.”

            “Ah, so that explains it…”

            “Explains what?”

            “Why they’re currently fucking like a couple of dogs in heat.”

            “ ** _WHAT?!?!_** ” Sokka bellowed. He shot to his feet, whirled around, almost fell off Appa, wildly flailed and wind-milled his arms and for a moment knew, not thought, _knew_ , that he was about to die, but it was fine, because Aunt Wu could suck it, it wouldn’t be his fault, like he had always suspected would be the case, no, it was his sister’s fault, and he could lord that over her in the afterlife for the rest of eternity, _even Yue would have to admit that I would have cause_ , but finally Toph grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him forward where he bashed his forehead into the back of the bench hard enough to make his ears ring, _but hey, at least I’m not going to die, but that stupid fucking jerkbender is,_ and he propped himself up on the back of the pilot’s bench and rubbed his eyes and shook his head until the world became clear again and started to pull himself up and over the back of the bench, it was going to be bad enough that Aang was on death’s door and how was he supposed to explain Katara’s new boyfriend to their father when they got to Chameleon Bay, _man, Dad’s going to **kill me,**_ and he was opening his mouth to put a stop to it all when his vision cleared and he saw-

            Aang, chest softly rising and falling under a blanket, far, far away, and Katara and Zuko, exhausted, leaning against the side of the saddle, snuggled together under a blanket, obviously fully clothed, obviously fast asleep, Katara’s head nestled into the crook between Zuko’s shoulder and his chest, Zuko’s arm tight around her shoulders, Zuko’s head lolled back against the rim of the saddle, mouth hanging wide, softly snoring.

            How they slept through Toph’s hysterical laughter, Sokka would never know.

            How he resisted shoving her off Appa was an even bigger mystery.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey motherfuckers, guess what?! I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK! *maniacal Toph-like laughter*
> 
> But seriously, it feels so fucking good to be back on here. I'm so sorry I was away for so long. Basically, life walked up and kicked me in the balls, dragging me kicking and screaming away from you, my lovely, amazing, wonderful readers. I'll never forgive myself for missing all of the Zutara events last year, but this year? I'm going to make up for it. Damn right, we're gonna do Zutara Week and Zutara Month and I've got, like, more stories mapped out and partially written than I can shake a stick at. I've got stuff for my own brand of ATLA and Zutara, I've got stuff for the Legend of Zelda, I've even got stuff for motherfucking Star Wars, yo.


	2. Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara may be a doctor, a wife, and a mother of two, but somehow, none of that prepared her for when her daughter asked her what the c-word meant. Based on a true story.
> 
> Set in the Cop/Doctor AU introduced in A Little Bit of This, and a Little Bit of That, in the entries Strangers, Secret Lovers, Escape, Wedding, Ash, Pregnancy, Forbidden, and Complementary. 
> 
> Content Warning: Repeated uses of a word that starts with a c and rhymes with runt, but to be fair, it's a confused eleven-year-old asking her mom what it means.

**Letters**

“MOM, WHAT DOES _CUNT_ MEAN?”

            Later that night, after the girls had gone to bed and she finally had a quiet moment with her husband, Katara would struggle far more than an honest-to-La _doctor_ should to describe the sound she made when her eleven-year-old flu-stricken daughter asked her that question. She would test and discard many possibilities, gesturing wildly through the air with a precariously full glass of wine, while Zuko would sip his beer and put forward his own candidates for the job. Eventually, she would take a big gulp of wine and shoot a finger at him and point out that, for a homicide detective, he was being maddeningly imprecise, at which point he would counter that, as a doctor, surely she was far more familiar with the sounds of human beings choking on various liquids than he was, after all, if he ever found a person who had choked, it was generally long after the sounds had stopped. Naturally, she would be forced to concede the point in a way that _sounded_ like she had conceded nothing at all, even though she knew her husband saw through her as easily as she saw through him.

            In the end, the sound she settled on as being the closest to what her body produced when Korra uttered the word _cunt_ right as Katara was taking a sip of tea was something along the lines of _hrgle-blergle-hrk_. Later, the medical part of her mind would diagnose the cause as a gulp of liquid combined with shock, exacerbated by an instinctual reaction by which her body made matters worse by refusing to spew the tea all over the living room.

            At the time, she was just glad that she hadn’t choked to death.

            “Alright,” Zuko said, taking a pull from his beer, “now that _that’s_ settled, paint the scene for me.”

            Katara settled back into her chair, wine glass carefully balanced on her stomach. It really was a wonderful night, she mused, light and cool, the trees whispering in a soft, gentle breeze that smelled of fresh cut grass and the salty heaviness of Yue Bay. All around them in the dark, the suburbs of Republic City pulsed in the night, and the waxing moon hung high up in the sky, its pull sending sparks rippling through Katara’s veins.

            These moments out on the back patio, sprawled in reclining lawn chairs side-by-side with her husband, sipping adult beverages and their two daughters sound asleep ( _or, at least pretending to be so_ ), were some of Katara’s favorite. She loved her daughters, loved her career, loved her nice quiet family life, sometimes she even loved the dog that was busy dozing inside, now too old and lazy to do a quick patrol of the fence, for all that the dog had long since decided that Zuko was her one true love, never mind that it was _Katara_ who had picked her at the shelter.

            And yet, it was these fleeting moments snatched from the hustle and bustle of life in Republic City that made Katara feel truly at peace, when it was just her and her boy, together, like they had always been, like they would always _be_ , dissecting and picking apart their days.

            _Speaking of which…_

“Right, so, there I am, sprawled on the sofa, Korra nestled into my side, you know how she is when she’s not feeling well.”

            Zuko chuckled. “Yeah…she’s a _big tough girl,_ right up until she gets a sniffle and then she’s all, _I love you Mommy, I love you Daddy, can we watch the ‘Onions Movie’ one more time?”_

            Katara gave a scoff worthy of Toph, her former roommate and current best friend. “ _Please._ It’s never just _one more time._ ”

            “True…but hey, it’s better than that stupid rainbow horse show that Ursa’s obsessed with.” That being Ursa, their youngest, all of eight-years-old.

            “Hey now, _My Little Ostrich-Pony_ is a lovely show that teaches good messages in a wholesome, family-friendly way.”

            “Alright then, want to go watch a few episodes?”

            “Gods no. _Anyways,_ there I am, curled up with Korra, sipping tea from a thermos and watching the umpteenth episode of _Curious Gao_ -“

            Her husband groaned. “Gods, I hate that stupid little monkey.”

            “You’ll hear no argument from me. As I was saying, you and Ursa had just left for the movies, and thanks for getting her out of the house tonight, by the way, I don’t know how you handled _both of them_ last night.”

            “Oh, it wasn’t so bad. It’s all about subtle redirection and learning to tune out the thousandth repetition of _Daddy, I’m **bored.**_ ”

            “Ugh, _tell me about it._ But yeah, there we are, Korra’s sniffling and watching that stupid monkey gambol about and I’m sipping my tea, wondering what I’m going to whip up for dinner, thinking about calling your mother to see how she’s doing,” seeing as Katara’s mother-in-law had managed to catch the flu from her namesake, who had been stricken with the illness the week before, “when, just, I swear to La, out of _nowhere,_ our daughter, _our eleven-year-old daughter,_ I feel like adding, just kind of popped up, looked at me with this serious look in her eye, and asked, in this calm, utterly rational, somewhat confused tone of voice, _Mom, what does cunt mean?”_

Katara quickly shot a look at her husband, just in time to see him try and hide his growing smile with his beer.

            She rolled her eyes and shot him the bird. “Yeah, yeah, _laugh it up,_ I’m already praying to the gods that Ursa asks you what a penis is while you’re in a supermarket checkout line.”

            Zuko’s incipient smile died a quick death. “ _Joy_. So, what’d you do?”

            “Well, first, I tried not to die, seeing as I almost choked to death on my tea, and then, after the coughing fit subsided, I started composing the angry voicemail I was going to leave on your sister’s phone.”

            “Hey now, Korra could just as easily have learned that word from Toph.”

            “No, because Toph would’ve made sure that Korra knew what it _meant._ ”

            “Okay, fair. What then?”

            “Naturally, I asked her where she’d heard that word, fulling expecting to hear her say, _Oh, Auntie Zula shouted it while she was driving us to the park the other day and she told me to ask Dad but I forgot to ask Dad so I’m asking you_ , or, I don’t know, something similar.”

            Zuko sighed. “That is how the girls learned the f-word.”

            “No,” Katara demurred, raising a solitary finger into the air, “that’s how they learned _dickhead_. They learned the f-word from Suki.” Suki, naturally, was Zuko’s partner in Homicide, one of his best friends since the Academy.

            “And they learned _shit_ from you.”

            “Look, I can’t always control who’s in earshot when I stub my toe, okay? And since when did you get so _high-and-mighty_ , Mr. _Told My Wife Her Tits Were Looking Fabulous Without Checking to Make Sure that Our Daughters Were Not in the Kitchen with Her?”_

“Well,” Zuko said, rubbing the back of his neck and looking suitably embarrassed, “your tits were looking fabulous that day.”

            “Psh, you always think my tits look fabulous.”

            “Well, they do! That doesn’t invalidate my point.”

            Katara looked down at the objects in question, grabbed one, gave it a squeeze, and decided that, two children and the ravages of time notwithstanding, her husband was right, her tits _were_ fabulous. “Anyways, so I ask her where she learned that word, and she said, _Oh, in your book.”_

Zuko frowned. “Since when did you read books that have that word in them?”

            “That’s what I thought! So, I asked her, _Well, honey, what book are you talking about?_ And, to my surprise, she got up, making sure to keep her blanket wrapped tight around her shoulders, and padded off to her room, returning with none other than _The Complete and Unedited Correspondence of Fire Lord Zuko and Fire Lady Katara, Volume Three._ ”

            Zuko’s eyes flew wide. “Wait, _what?!_ I mean, since when did she start reading _that?”_

“We did tell the girls that they could read anything that was on Mommy and Daddy’s bookshelves.”

            “True, but, come on, that set is thick and leather bound and each volume even has one of those stupid little silk bookmarks attached to the spine. What kind of eleven-year-old would pick _that_ up?”

            “Um…both of us, at eleven?”

            “Okay, _point,_ still, though, our girls are _normal_ kids. Also, since when was the c-word in those books?”

            Katara popped an eyebrow. “I thought you said you read them?”

            Zuko suddenly became very interested in his beer. “Well, I mean, I definitely…you know… _skimmed them_ at some point…”

            Katara giggled. “Uh huh. But, back to my story, Korra drops the book into my lap and opens it up, she had even marked the page where she’d found the word, and sure enough, there it was, staring me right in the face.”

            And it had been, too. The monarchs who had fought beside Avatar Aang and helped pull the world from the destruction and chaos of the Hundred Years’ War had, over the course of their long marriage, developed the habit of passing short little notes to each other, in addition to the reams of letters they had written any time one or the other was away. For reasons that Katara had never fully understood, their five children, when it came time to collect and preserve their parents’ correspondence, had decided to hunt down as many of these little notes as humanly possible and publish them for the world to read.

            The _whys_ and _wherefores_ weren’t important, though. What _was_ important, was the particular note that had somehow survived almost three centuries to one day be read by an eleven-year-old girl named for a long-dead Avatar, daughter of a brand new Zuko and Katara, though, oddly enough, neither Katara nor her husband were actually named for the famous couple ( _at least, not directly; both “Zuko” and “Katara” were traditional names in their families_ ). The scholarly note that accompanied the text in question explained that, according to research, the note had been written while the Fire Nation’s House of Peers was locked in heated debate over a bill that the Fire Lady had been heavily involved in. The note went on to explain that, at the time of the debate, the Fire Lady was heavily pregnant with what turned out to be twin girls, and so was watching the debate from a private gallery, high above the clouds of smoke that any large gathering of Fire Nation citizens tended to produce, especially in those days. Apparently, a rather elderly member of the house, a _Lady Fukuyama,_ had been in the middle of a rather long-winded, tiresome speech, a habit she was rather infamous for, when the Fire Lady had scratched out her note, handed it to a lady-in-waiting, and sent it down to the Fire Lord, who had, according to credible accounts, burst into hysterical laughter upon receiving it.

            The note read:

            _I swear by all the gods, both above and below, that this sanctimonious cunt is on a one-woman mission to destroy forever my belief in the principle of free speech. If she doesn’t shut up soon, I’m going to go find a barrel of rancid cabbages and start throwing._

            Back on the patio, Katara watched her husband take all of this in, sipping his beer while a calm, rather contemplative expression settled across his face.

            “So,” he said, “did the _Lady Fukuyama_ ever shut up?”

            Katara shrugged. “The scholar’s note didn’t say, which is a shame, because now I really want to know.”

            “Same. So, what did you tell our daughter?”

            Katara tossed back the last gulp of wine in her glass. “What else could I say? I told her that it was a very bad word, especially when used towards a woman, that Fire Lady Katara shouldn’t have used it three centuries ago and that Korra _definitely_ shouldn’t **_ever_** use it now.”

            “I see…” Zuko polished off his beer and set it down on the patio. “Did she point out that, while she understood what you were saying, you still hadn’t actually answered her question?”

            Katara rolled her eyes. “Have you met our daughters? Of _course_ that’s what she said.”

            “And then what did you do?”

            Katara didn’t answer at first. Instead, she set her empty wine glass down, rolled herself out of her chair, sauntered over to her husband ( _making sure to put an extra sway in her hips, because she knew how to press his buttons_ ), and slowly, carefully, _seductively,_ settled herself into his lap and draped herself across his chest. She buried her hands in his hair and pulled him forward and laid a kiss that had them both gasping for breath before she was done. Naturally, it had the desired effect, judging by the growing lump that was starting to poke into her thigh and by the way her husband’s hands were now slipping up underneath her shirt.

            By the time all was said and done, they were back in their bedroom, door firmly locked, breathless, spent, and covered in sweat. Katara was tracing lazy circles on her husband’s chest, watching him slowly recover his senses enough to start to realize that she had neglected to answer his question, when there was a knock at the door and a small, eight-year-old voice saying, “Hey, Daddy? I had a bad dream.”

            Zuko sighed and threw on sweat pants and a shirt and padded out to chase the monsters from the depths of their youngest daughter’s closet. Katara took the opportunity to throw on one of her husband’s hoodies and a pair of yoga pants and headed off to check on Korra, barely suppressing the urge to start whistling a jaunty tune.

            Because, see, when her eldest daughter had pointed out that Katara had managed to not answer the original question, Katara had done the only thing a parent can do in such a situation:

            She had told her to ask her father in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, first things' first: Apologies for the use of the c-word. I stand by this particular usage, because it's directly inspired by the time that I asked my mother was an orgy was in the check out line at Tom Thumb (because the National Enquirer always has interesting words on the cover and eleven-year-olds have no filter) and kids just do crap like this sometimes, but still, let me me clear: 
> 
> That word is horrible and derogatory and should never be used...which has never stopped children from asking their parents what it means at unexpected times, but hey, if we all stopped using it, maybe kids would stop asking what it means. See? Just doing my bit for human progress.
> 
> Anyhoo, I said that this was based on a true story, and that was a lie: It's based on several true stories. For example, inappropriate questions asked by children in supermarket check-out lines? My mom used to dread check-out lines for that very reason. Little kids cutely asking the meaning of bad words, words that they almost always learned from some member of their family? That's just life, yo. And, least but not least, a married couple going out on their patio after their kid(s) finally go to bed, to sip adult beverages and pick apart their day?
> 
> Guys, that's what my wife and I do every damn night. It's pretty much our favorite part of the day, and here in Texas, the heat seems to have finally broken and we're super stoked to talk about this work and you guys and what cute things our son did today, because I'm doing a summer internship which means I can't be a stay-at-home dad right now and it's fucking killing me you guys, ugh. But I love my family and we're going strong, and that is the final true story that this little piece is based off of.
> 
> And I think that's enough sugar for you guys to digest tonight. Love you guys! Keep the reviews coming!
> 
> MOVING ON! In tomorrow's episode, a heavily pregnant Fire Lady Katara sips tea and finds herself debating the merits of women's suffrage. Stay tuned!


	3. Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Fire Lady, Katara can build schools, dedicate hospitals, and help craft legislation that will shape the her adopted country for generations to come, but it's the little victories, often heralded by a cup of tea, that make her smile the most.
> 
> A standalone story, though feel free to read all of my other stuff.
> 
> Content Warning: This is a story involving politics, written by a former Social Studies major who minored in Political Science and watches CSPAN for fun. You have been warned. No adult language, though.

**7/31 – Tea**

THE LADY ASIAQ PULLED HER FACE INTO A DEMURE LITTLE FROWN, CLASPED HER HANDS TIGHT IN HER LAP, AND SAID, “BEGGING YOUR MAJESTY’S PARDON, BUT I’M NOT SURE I UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M SEEING.”

            Her Most Serene and Royal Majesty, Mother of the Nation, Guardian of Hearth and Home, the Fire Lady Katara, bit down hard on the urge to snap something mean at her lady-in-waiting. Instead, she focused on her weak, heavily-watered tea, and convinced herself that the cruel retorts percolating in the back of her mind were the fault of being six-months pregnant with her fifth child, and all the associated hormones and deprivations.

            _Even my one glass of wine a week comes heavily watered and barely filling the glass halfway,_ she internally grumbled, sipping her tea and trying not to wince at how milquetoast and bland the blend was. After considering and tossing aside a half-dozen responses, she eventually turned her attention away from the happenings on the floor of the Fire Nation’s House of Commons and focused on the Lady Asiaq. “My dear,” she said, working hard to keep the _Mother of Four_ from creeping too far into her voice, “I understand that the language is different, but surely _some of it_ is familiar? After all, my husband and his advisors borrowed liberally from the North’s system of government when they were drawing up the Constitution.”

            Lady Asiaq shrugged, unclasping her hands and holding up on so that she could examine the nails. “I suppose; I wouldn’t know much about that, though.”

            Katara bit down on yet another ill-advised retort, less because this one would have been _mean_ and more because it would have reeked of _Mom._ “You’ve never observed your own Parliament in action?”

            Lady Asiaq rounded on her with an expression caught somewhere between shock and indignation. “Oh, no, Your Majesty, women aren’t allowed to attend sittings of Parliament.”

            Katara could feel the anger, the frustration, the outright _rage_ building deep within her soul. She could feel its red hot fingers slowly clawing their way out of her gut and step-by-step up her spine, ever ready to sink themselves into her brain, there to unleash her infamous temper. “But I saw a several women attending a session last I was in Iqaluit,” that being, the Northern Water Tribe’s capital.

            Lady Asiaq shrugged. “Oh, they only do that when you’re in town, Your Majesty.”

            _I knew it I knew it I FU-calm down, Katara, deep breaths, in and out, IN and OUT, **IN AND OUT**_. Katara closed her eyes for a moment, counted to ten, breathed in, breathed out, then counted to ten once more. Ever since the end of the War, and especially since she had taken her place beside Zuko and put on her crown, she had worked hard, day-and-night it sometimes seemed, to improve the lot of women in the North. It had often felt like she was pushing a boulder up a mountain all by herself, but there had started to feel like her efforts were worthwhile. Formal education had _finally_ been opened to women, several girls’ schools had been established, and she herself had established a program by which poor Northern girls could attend university in the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, an option previously only available to the daughters of the rich and powerful, when it was offered at all. She had really started to feel like she was accomplishing something, especially on her last state visit, when she had sat in the viewing gallery above the North’s own House of Commons, flanked by her twin daughters, Kya and Ursa, and seen at least fifty-or-so Northern women scattered amongst the crowd.

            _I dedicated two schools for girls on that trip,_ she remembered, her teeth grinding in frustration. _Were those a fiction, too, for all that I helped pay for them?!_

            Finally, though, after what felt like ages, the red mist coloring the edges of her vision began to recede. It was frustrating, infuriating, downright _heartbreaking,_ but in the end, she had to admit that Uncle, as usual, had been right. _Ba Sing Se was not built in a day, my dear, as I often must remind your husband._ She bit down on a sad, bitter sigh. _Oh, Uncle Iroh, I miss you so much. We all miss you._ She muttered a quiet prayer for her soul, placed a hand on her steadily expanding stomach, and reaffirmed her promise to name this final child after him, should the baby be a boy.

            _And besides,_ she told herself, taking a final, calming breath, _it’s not like it’s this poor girl’s fault._ Katara gave Asiaq a once-over. _Girl_ was the right word; the Lady Asiaq was barely seventeen-years-old, petite for a young woman of the Water Tribes, with a soft-spoken demureness that made her seem even younger.

            _She makes me feel impossibly old._

“Well,” Katara said, handing her empty cup-and-saucer to her lady’s maid and gesturing for a glass of lemonade, “I suppose that’s something I’ll have to take up with Lord Tiguaak,” that being, the Northern ambassador. “He’s your…uncle, I believe?”

            Asiaq nodded, looking relieved to be back on what was, to her, more comfortable ground. “Yes, Your Majesty. He’s my mother’s older brother.”

            Katara hopped her curt nod did not betray how little she liked the officious, long-winded Lord Tiguaak, who’s Inuktitut was even more annoyingly nasal than Lady Asiaq’s. “And your father, Lord Ujurak, he’s a senior member of your own House of Peers, yes?”

            Asiaq nodded. “Oh, yes, of course, Your Majesty. He is the King’s second cousin, after all.”

            Katara somehow resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The Northern Water Tribe’s nobility rivaled the Fire Nation’s when it came to tangled family trees. “Well, then surely you’ve picked up a little about how government works, even if only through osmosis?”

            Asiaq frowned. “Osmosis, Your Majesty?”

            Just then, there came a knock at the door. Katara nodded at her lady’s maid, who got up and answered it, speaking quickly with whoever was there. When she returned, she brought with her a tray of cookie and a small, poorly folded piece of paper.

            Katara’s heart leapt into her throat, and as if it sensed her excitement at both the note and the cookie, her baby began to kick wildly. She gave her stomach a calming pat, even as she shoved an entire cookie in her mouth and greedily opened her note.

            It read, in Zuko’s careful, precise handwriting:

            _Lady Fukuyama has launched into yet another speech. You wouldn’t happen to have any of those rancid cabbages handy, would you? Kuzon_ (their eldest, the Crown Prince, who was sitting in for her before the House of Peers today, while she sat in a special viewing box high above the Commons) _would certainly appreciate the diversion. How are things in the Commons? How are you? Getting along with your newest lady-in-waiting yet? I love you and I can’t wait to see you during the lunch break. Enjoy your cookies!_

She allowed herself a goofy grin and looked up at the waiting page. “Did my husband send anything else?”

            The page, who looked even more impossibly young than Asiaq, handed over a big box upholstered in scarlet leather with her and Zuko’s joint monogram on the front. “The minutes of the first hour’s debate in the Peers, Your Majesty.”

            Katara’s goofy grin got even goofier. _That’s my Zuko; he always knows how to brighten my day._ “Excellent. Please, put it right here beside me, and I’ll let me jot down a reply to my husband.” Even after all these years, she still found it odd to casually refer to Zuko as _His Majesty_ , but the class-obsessed people of the Fire Nation seemed to become wildly uncomfortable whenever she used Zuko’s actual name in front of them. She handed Zuko’s note to her lady’s maid for safe-keeping ( _I wonder what it is Toph’s doing with them all? Surely she’s not actually keeping them, and it’s not like she can read them…_ ) and turned back to Asiaq. “My lady, if you could hand me a pen and a piece of paper?”

            Asiaq bowed her head and quickly produced the requested items. As Katara absently clicked the pen, mentally composing her reply to Zuko, Asiaq broke into a smile. “I must say, Your Majesty, your brother really outdid himself when he invented ballpoint pens.”

            Katara chuckled. “Yes, he really did, didn’t he?” _Not that he’ll ever hear **me** say so; someone’s got to keep him humble! _“Give me just a moment, my dear.” With that, she bent to her task.

            The resulting note read:

_Don’t you **dare** start throwing rancid cabbages – or rancid **anything** – at the stuck-up twat without me there! I called the first throw long ago, I remind you. The Commons are still in the opening speeches, but judging by what’s been said so far, I think the universal suffrage bill might just pass. How’s our little boy? He’s growing up too quick, sitting beside his father in front of the House! Be sure you eat something besides cigarettes and that horrid black tea you insist on drinking. As for Lady Asiaq, well…I’ll talk to you about it during lunch. Give Kuzon a kiss for me, and don’t forget, Hakoda and the girls are joining us for lunch, so try to keep the swearing to a minimum. I love you more than I could ever say!_

She folded up the note, nice and neat, and handed it to the page. “That’s for my husband. Is Her Grace the Duchess Akiyama observing the Peers today?”

            “I believe so, Your Majesty. His Grace the Duke is scheduled to speak whenever Lady Fukuyama finally…whenever the Lady Fukuyama finished her remarks.”

            Katara winked at the boy, to reassure him that his near slip-of-the-tongue would remain their secret. “So not until tomorrow, then? Well, if she doesn’t mind, please ask her to come join me here when she’s able to; I’d like her opinion of the mood in the Peers.”

            The page bowed. “At once, Your Majesty.” And with that, he was gone, and Katara went back to her cookie, her lemonade, and her teenaged lady-in-waiting.

            “So,” Katara said, offering the plate of cookies to her lady’s maid, who happily snatched up at least four, “what is it you don’t understand, my dear? Oh, and would you like a cookie or three? My husband sent more than I could ever eat.” Which was _far_ from true, but Katara had never actually seen Asiaq eat and it never ceased to bother her.

            Asiaq shook her head. “Oh, no, Your Majesty, I couldn’t possibly, and besides, I’m not hungry.”

            “Nonsense,” Katara snapped, unable to stop the _Mom_ that dripped from every syllable of the word. “What do cookies have to do with being hungry? Please, I insist.”

            Very gingerly, very carefully, Asiaq reached out, took the smallest cookie on the tray, and began to nibble at it. The woman Toph had long since dubbed _Momtara_ was _far_ from satisfied, but she supposed it would have to do for now. _At least I got her to eat more than food barely fit for rabbits._

            “Please,” she continued, “have as many as you want; Zuko will happily send me whole mountains of them. Now, as I said, what was it that you didn’t understand?”

            Asiaq shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, I suppose I don’t understand what it is they’re debating.”

            Katara frowned. “I thought you spoke Nihongo?” Katara had been assured by Lord Tiguaak that Asiaq spoke the language of the Fire Nation quite well, but now that Katara thought about it, she and Asiaq had never spoken in anything but Inuktitut, the language of the Water Tribes.

            Asiaq nodded. “Oh, yes, I’m quite fluent, my father insisted. Still, though…I mean, didn’t the men of the Fire Nation get the vote when the Constitution was passed after the War?”

            “They did,” Katara admitted, “but only men and women who met a property qualification. My husband and I advocated for universal suffrage, but I’m afraid the people were too unsure of democracy to go for it.”

            It was Asiaq’s turn to frown. “Women can vote in the Fire Nation?”

            “If they meet the property qualification, yes.”

            “But…how can they meet a property qualification?”

            _Gods, what are they teaching in those girls’ schools?_ Katara had helped craft a curriculum template, but she was starting to think that she would have to make a surprise visit to one of those schools to make sure it was being followed. _Though that might not help girls like Asiaq; noble girls, when they’re educated at all, are educated at home, by governesses._ Katara’s mood fell a bit more. _Not unlike the Fire Nation; the North isn’t the only place that needs an education overhaul. I’ll get the noble-born and the wealthy to send their children to actual schools if it kills me._

“Because,” Katara said out loud, “in the Fire Nation, woman can inherit property.” They were also covered by the country’s compulsory education law, which required all children, male and female, to attend school – free of charge, if they couldn’t afford it – until they were eighteen. It used to be fourteen, but Katara had seen to _that. Though, as with so many things, the rich and the well-born can avoid the schools and educate their children at home, and then send them to exclusive academies._ The Fire Nation’s entrenched class system never ceased to make Katara want to rip out her hair.

            “Oh,” Asiaq said, looking confused, “really?”

            Katara nodded. “Really.”

            “But surely they don’t _need_ to vote. Isn’t that men’s work?”

            _Don’t scream don’t scream **don’t scream-**_ “Are not women members of society? Are they not affected by the decisions and actions of the government? Do they not suffer when that government goes wrong?”

            Asiaq shrugged. “I suppose so…”

            “Then shouldn’t they have the right to participate in the government, and to make their voices heard?”

            Asiaq didn’t look convinced. “But surely they have no need to participate, when their fathers and their brothers and their husbands can do it for them?”

            “But we don’t _need_ the men in our lives to speak for us. We’re perfectly capable of speaking for ourselves, and of making our own decisions. And by the same token,” Katara continued, gesturing towards the floor of the Commons with a cookie, “even the poorest citizen of the Fire Nation has the right to participate in government and to make their voices heard, and the single most effective way to do that is with their vote, a vote they should’ve had a long time ago.”

            Asiaq’s eyes went wide with comprehension. “You’re very passionate about this, Your Majesty.”

            Katara leaned back, swallowing another bite of cookie which she washed down with a gulp of lemonade. “I should be; I helped craft the legislation.”

            The look on Asiaq’s face could not be called anything but horrified shock. “Your… _His Majesty lets you do that?!”_

Katara rolled her eyes. “My husband doesn’t _let_ me do _anything_ , my dear,” she said, a comment that made her lady’s maid, who spoke Inuktitut, giggle. “There’s no _let_ about it. I’m Fire Lady, I’m his partner, his right hand. So long as the people insist on not reducing the monarchy to a merely ceremonial function, then my husband will continue to serve and rule them in conjunction with their elected government, and I will stand beside him, hand-in-hand, and continue to do the same.”

            Asiaq just shook her head in wonder. “Wow…that is…I’m not sure what to make of that, Your Majesty.”

            Katara leaned forward, offering up a fresh cookie. “How about you do me this favor, my dear: Finish your cookie, eat this one, and ponder why the women of the North are systematically denied their voice, while the women of the Fire Nation and the women of the South are free to make their voices heard. After all, would you say that I’m a _bad_ Fire Lady?”

            Asiaq looked hard at the cookie, a hint of hunger glimmering in the corners of her deep blue eyes. “Oh, no, of course not, Your Majesty. Even those of a more… _traditional_ bent in the North praise your talents.”

            _Through gritted teeth, no doubt. Alas, I can’t fight them all in one-on-one waterbending duels, like with Pakku, gods rest his stiff-backed soul._ “Then, if I, a girl from the bottom of the world, who grew up without a formal education, can do so much, what could you, daughter of one of the most powerful nobles in the Northern Water Tribe, do?”

            Asiaq reached and carefully took the proffered cookie. “I don’t know, Your Majesty.”

            “Neither do I, young lady, but I’d love to find out.”

            And with that, the Lady Asiaq blinked, took a massive bite out of her first cookie, and took the second.

            Just then, a knock at the door announced the arrival of the Duchess Akiyama, just as pregnant as Katara. Katara lumbered to her feet, and the two women bowed and kissed each other on the both cheeks, a custom Katara had brought with her to the Fire Nation and that she was pleased to see was spreading.

            As they settled, Katara switched into Nihongo and asked the Duchess, “So, Emiko, how goes it in the Peers? I have the minutes of the first hour of debate, but I’d like to hear your impression.”

            Akiyama Emiko, a woman Katara considered a close friend, smiled and took a proffered cookie and a cup of the same weak tea Katara had been drinking all morning. “Well, the big problem is that my fellow Peers think the whole matter is beneath them. You know how they can be about acknowledging that the lowborn and the poor even exist.”

            “Tell me about it. Do you think the bill will pass?”

            The Duchess laughed. “If that uptight idiot Lady Fukuyama goes on much longer, the entire House will unite to push the bill through just to shut her up.”

            Katara giggled. “I knew that old biddy would come in handy sooner or later. How’s my son behaving himself?”

            That just made the Duchess laugh even harder. “When your note was given to His Majesty, he laughed, reached over, and gave His Royal Highness a big kiss on the cheek. The whole House roared with laughter.”

            Katara clapped her hands and smiled even wider. “Oh, I love that man, I really do. Did that at least make Fukuyama stop for a minute?”

            The Duchess rolled her eyes. “I doubt the old bat even noticed. How goes things in the Commons?”

            Katara sighed. “The Conservatives are dead-set against it; I think they’re afraid of having to demean themselves by having to actually _campaign_ for votes from poor people. The Liberals are still divided right down the middle, but I’m hoping that the other, minor parties might be able to exert enough pressure to break any potential deadlock. I really do think a lot of the moderates are killing time to see what the Peers do.”

            The Duchess nodded, face set and serious. “So, there’s hope, then.” She turned, then, to the Lady Asiaq, who, Katara was pleased to see, was not only halfway through her second cookie and holding a tall glass of lemonade, but had also been intently watching the speech being given by Murasaki-san, a leading member of the Conservatives. “What do you think, Lady…Asiaq, right?”

            Asiaq turned, eyes wide. “Oh…um…what do _I_ think…?”

            “Please, speak freely,” Katara said, a very _Mom_ hint of encouragement in her voice.

            Asiaq nodded, frowned, looked out at the floor of the House, and then, somehow, slowly, carefully, the frown turned into a small, uncertain, but still very welcome grin. She turned back to Katara and the Duchess, took a gulp off her lemonade, swallowed, and said:

            “I think I’d like to know more about all of this, Your Grace.”

            Katara smiled, reached out, patted Asiaq’s knee. “And would you like to come with me to the Commons tomorrow?”

            Asiaq smiled, with more certainty this time. “I’d like that very much.”

            Katara almost danced with joy. Yes, she was Fire Lady, a strong and forceful Fire Lady, who could commission schools and dedicate hospitals and work side-by-side with her royal husband, but it was the little victories that made her feel like she was truly accomplishing something.

            Even if it was one woman at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This...almost didn't get up in time, guys. There are a lot of reasons, but mostly because I'm a total political nerd, and the first version was...let's just say that it was much longer, and would only be of interest to other political science nerds and my lovely, amazing, beautiful wife, who gets hot and bothered when I talk politics to her.
> 
> Also, in case it's not clear, I'm pretty far to the left in my politics. If that bothers you, I don't particularly care; I have to listen to my asshole, Trump-supporting step-father and little brother rant about ultra-right-wing bullshit every damn holiday, you guys can let me drop a little SJW liberalism in your fanfiction.
> 
> Anyhoo, not a long AN today, mostly because it's getting late (it's past ten here in Texas), I need to hang out with my wife, I gotta work tomorrow, and most of all, if I don't stop myself now, this AN will become longer than the story, and who would want that?
> 
> Well, I mean, my wife, and also a lot of you, but my wife has already heard my rant about my vision of the geopolitical structure of the Avatar-verse post-War. If you guys want to hear it, feel free to send me an Ask on Tumblr (I'm under kangaroo2010), or hit me up on Twitter (@Historybuff2013). If you PM on here, be warned, I SUCK at responding to those in a timely manner.
> 
> Also, due to the looming Zutara Week deadline, I wasn't able to give this a good proofread. I hope to come back later and fix that, but if I don't get around to it, please, be nice. Remember, I love you guys, so please, love me back! *looks cute*
> 
> Moving on! In tomorrow's thrilling episode, Zuko and Katara wander away from the Gaang and find themselves standing by a pond full of turtleducks, in what will essentially be a rewrite of the opening of A Different Path, which you can find on my profile at FF.net under kangaroo2010, a story that I ask you to be kind to, since I hadn't figured out a lot of things yet. I was young! In the meantime, stay tuned!


	4. Turtleduck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko could never help but notice that his life seemed to turn on the smallest of things. A whispered word here, a moment of passion there, or strangest of all, the quack of a turtleduck.
> 
> A direct sequel to Sunday's entry, First Kiss. This can also be read as a much better, properly proofread rewrite of the opening to my first story, A Different Path.
> 
> Warning: There's, like, an f-bomb lurking somewhere in there.

**Turtleduck**

ZUKO WOULD HAVE WALKED RIGHT PAST THE POND IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR THE _QUACK._

            He regretted stopping almost immediately. It was just so…so utterly _stupid. So utterly like **me.**_ It was the second full day since they had fled Ba Sing Se, fled a failure the likes of which none of them had ever imagined, even in the depths of their most horrid nightmares. They had flown all through the rest of that day, flown through that night and the day that followed and the night after that, not daring to stop, ever mindful that their exhausted air bison was carrying three wanted fugitives, a stricken Avatar, and a traitorous prince. _No,_ Zuko corrected himself, his eye searching the pond, searching swaying shadows cast by the overarching trees above, _worse than a traitorous prince. No, I’m a **spare** prince now, and we all know what happens to spare princes, don’t we? How does the story go? **The gods care not how many princes and princesses live on the day the funeral pyre is lit, for the Scarlet Throne only has room for one.**_

            Zuko looked up. The pond was a small one, with an irregular shape, almost completely covered by interlocking branches thick and heavy with summer leaves. It might have been neat and well-kept once, but now it was one with nature, the last remnants of a long-gone manor. Zuko couldn’t help but wonder who had ordered it built, who had ordered it maintained. How old was it? Did some long-dead petty king create it, or was there a temple here once, this little pond the all that was left of the local priest’s home? Or was it-

            _Stop it, you idiot, just…just fucking **stop it.**_ Zuko groaned at his own idiocy, smacking himself upside the head and adjusting the strap from which hung several skins full of water he had filled at a nearby stream. He was tired, exhausted, bewildered, shattered, _conflicted,_ his emotions a tattered maelstrom, the heat of Katara’s kiss still seeming to linger on his lips, the pain of his uncle’s last words still searing his bruised and bleeding heart.

            _No! Dammit, Zuko, get a hold of yourself!_ He resisted the urge to slap himself across the face and turned on his heel, snapping around in an about face that even Master Piandao at the Royal Military Academy would have approved of. He set his shoulders and narrowed his one good eye and cursed the lack of expression in his dead eye and gave the strap of the waterskins one last adjustment and lifted one foot and prepared to march away and forget this pond had ever existed, or that he had ever stopped beside it.

            But then it happened again.

            _Quack!_

 _`_            He spun back around on his heel so fast that the world tilted and went for a little spin. He blinked, forcing everything to snap back into focus, and then he looked down and there it was, swimming toward him, slow and unsure, for a moment he was sure he was imagining things, that the exhaustion and the stress and the fact that the most beautiful woman in the world had kissed him – _with tongue_ – had finally gotten to him and here he was, standing by a random little pond in the middle of nowhere, finally going mad. _Who knows? Maybe I’ll go full Fire Lord Higashiyama and start talking to trees. Wouldn’t that be funny? My sister can tie me up out front of the Palace and charge twenty sen a head to let the peasants come and throw rocks at me._

_It wouldn’t be the worst end I’ve ever imagined for myself._

He was sitting. He didn’t remember sitting down, but his butt hurt and there was a faint ache in his spine, so he must’ve come down hard. The waterskins were in a sloppy pile beside him and he was inching forward, his breath caught in his throat, he didn’t have any idea what he was doing, he would’ve given anything, _anything at all,_ for a loaf of bread, or even a crust of bread, _anything,_ but he didn’t have so much as a crumb so he inched his way down to the edge of the pond and held out his hand and waggled his fingers.

            _Just like Mother taught me._

If the turtleduck had just turned right around and paddled away, everything would’ve been just fine. He would’ve sat there in the cool shade of the trees, fought down a nicotine fit or three, stood up, brushed off the grass and picked up the waterskins and who knows, he might even have chuckled a time or two, _though definitely not three, that would be excessive,_ and then he would turn on his heel one final time and march away and go right back to dodging reproachful glares from Sokka and exchanging arm punches with Toph and listening to Aang breathing and maybe, just maybe, lock eyes with Katara for yet another brief, exhilarating moment, at least until they both remembered where they were and what had happened and then they’d blush bright red and look away and then-

            And then…

            _And then…_

The turtleduck didn’t run away. It hesitated, it turned a few lazy circles, but then it was there, stretching its head out towards his fingertips…

            At which point it promptly bit him.

            Zuko stared.

            _It bit me._

Zuko blinked.

            _It… **bit me…**_

            Zuko’s entire body shook.

            **_It BIT me…_**

**** _Mommy, it bit me!_

_Can I have your room if you die?_

_Lucky to be born._

_Everything I do, I do for you._

_About time, jerkbender._

_You will learn respect, and pain will be your teacher!_

_If we knew each other back then, do you think we could have been friends, too?_

_It’s just…I think it’s time that you and I sat down and talked, you know, really talked, just the two of us, no Aang, no mission, no anything, just…talked…_

_You’re a prince to me, Your Highness._

_I’ve never been prouder of you…_

He didn’t know how long he sat there, his only company a confused turtleduck and a pile of waterskins and his memories. All he knew was that he didn’t stop crying until he realized someone was sitting beside him. He took deep, burning gulps of air, wiped his eye and blubbered and dabbed at his cheek. That almost made him start crying all over again, the fact that there were tears on only one cheek. All he wanted to do was cry his eyes out, but he couldn’t, he could only cry one out, because the other was dead and burned and buried in the mark of his father’s esteem and it was times like this that he could almost feel the fire touching his skin all over again and he could almost hear his screams and-

            He pulled himself upright, giving his eye a final wipe and straightening his back. He turned to his new companion and tried to smile and almost broke down all over again.

            It was Katara. She was trying to smile, too, but it wasn’t working, because her bottom lip was beginning to tremble and her eyes looked washed out, more grey than their usual startling, almost blinding deep bright blue. He reached out for her, and one of her hands shot out and she tangled her fingers in his and the smile grew even as it began to crack.

            “Hey,” she whispered, her voice thick and quivering. “I was beginning to worry about you.”

            He tried to smile, he really did. “Sorry about that…I guess I just…saw this pond and lost track of time…”

            She nodded, quick and sharp, brushing at her eyes and looking out at the pond.

            He couldn’t help but notice that, instead of letting go of his hand, she gripped it even tighter.

            “It’s a…it’s a nice little pond,” she said, almost whispering. “It could use a little tender loving care, but it’s nice.”

            He couldn’t take his eye off her. “There’s a turtleduck swimming around in it somewhere. I think my blubbering scared it off.”

            Her body stiffened. Two months they had had in Ba Sing Se before the Crystal Catacombs, two months that had felt like two years and that seemed far more than two days in their past. For two months, they had seen each other almost every day and talked about everything, even their mothers.

            Katara knew all about the turtleducks.

            Her grip on his hand grew tighter. He knew she was well aware of how quickly the memory of a long-lost mother could strike.

            And how cruel that strike could be.

            She turned away from the pond, went digging with her free hand in a satchel he hadn’t noticed was slung across her body. “So,” she said, her voice still thick, a lone tear trickling its way down her cheek, “Sokka went to Chameleon Bay, right? And apparently, Dad and the other warriors have captured a lot of Fire Nation stuff since they started guarding it, and that includes just… _mountains_ of Fire Nation cigarettes, so Sokka, he brought a few cartons back with him, and I figured he could spare a few so here you go.”

            She whirled around and pressed something into his free hand, and she took her free hand away from his and he could help but shudder at how her fingertips brushed the rough skin of his palm as they withdrew but then he looked down and there it was.

            An unopened pack of standard, Fire Nation Army-issued cigarettes.

            He laughed. He couldn’t help it. He laughed and shook his head and stuffed them in his pocket.

            He wanted them desperately, but they could wait.

            “How are you, Katara?”

            She smiled, sad and small.

            “You know, Zuko, I don’t get asked that very often.”

            “Well…prepare to get asked it a lot more.”

            Her smile grew, just a little. “About time. And as for me…I’m…I’m not okay.”

            “Me, neither.”

            “I’m scared.”

            “Me, too.”

            “I don’t know if Aang will make it.”

            “It won’t be for lack of trying.”

            “I’m sorry about your uncle.”

            “That makes two of us.”

            “I’m beginning to think we might not win this thing.”

            “Me, too.”

            “I really like you.”

            “I really like you, too.”

            “My father’s going to be mad, but I don’t really care.”

            “Me, neither.”

            “Did you want to kiss me, when we went on that last _date that wasn’t supposed to be a date_ and we went and looked at the fountain and you lit the lanterns while I covered my eyes?”

            “Desperately.”

            “You should have.”

            “I know that now.”

            “What did you say to your sister?”

            “What?”

            “When she gave you back your _katana_ and made her offer, you looked at your _katana_ for a long time then you slung it over your back and you said something in Nihongo and then you attacked her.”

            “Oh…it was…well…the closed translation into Inuktitut would be, _Sister, I love you, but seriously, get bent._ ”

            “Really?”

            “Really. Oddly enough, it’s the pithiest thing I’ve ever said.”

            She started to laugh, and then he caught the bug and he was laughing, too, and they laughed until they were in each other’s arms, holding each other tight as they started crying all over again, only this time, it didn’t feel bad to cry. It didn’t make them feel worse.

            They discovered that when they cried together, it only made them feel stronger.

            By the time they made it back to where Appa was resting, Toph was dozing in the saddle, keeping an eye – so to speak – on Aang, while Sokka had a haunch of freshly caught fox-antelope on a makeshift spit over a fire, dark-rimmed eyes wide and glazed over with ecstasy.

            If he noticed that his sister and Zuko were holding hands, he chose to ignore it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There I was, sitting there, thinking to myself, You know? We've had a lot of fluff. Just tons of honest, good-times-had-by-all fluff. TIME TO CHANGE THAT!
> 
> If you're new to my work, ask some of my older fans, and they'll let you know that, as tough as that was, you got off easy.
> 
> *maniacal Toph laughter*
> 
> Anyhoo, like I mentioned up at the top, this story has two fathers. One, is a long-standing, deep-seated hunger to go back and rewrite A Different Path. In my opinion, while that story is fun, it's also kind of crap. I hadn't figured out my voice yet, I had no patience for proofreading, I sucked at editing, and I really hadn't figured out this whole fanfiction thing yet. And yet, here we are, four freaking years later, and I really do feel that my writing abilities have grown by leaps and bounds. So, I took this week's prompt as a chance to, at the very least, take another crack at the opening to that story.
> 
> The second ancestor is my love of my Ripples from an Oasis AU. It currently makes up several stories in A Little Bit of This, and a Little Bit of That, which you can find on this very profile! If you skip to the last entry, you can find a kind of "Master List," which will tell you which stories make up that particular AU.
> 
> Or, you can just scroll back to this week's first entry, First Kiss, and get the full list there. Let me know if you do, and what you think!
> 
> I didn't have a chance to get too deep into last night's entry, and I've decided not to get too deep into it here. One of you has already taken me up on my offer to ask for more details over on Tumblr (look me up under kangaroo2010), and if that person is reading right now, don't worry, I will reply. At length. You may end up wishing you hadn't. That offer still stands; you can also hit me up on Twitter @Historybuff2013, or toss me a comment on AO3 under kangaroo2010. I mean, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for this site, but it makes interacting with people a bit of a pain.
> 
> Plus, I suck at responding to e-mails and phone calls. There's a reason why my sister just calls my wife when she needs to get a hold of me!
> 
> Anyhoo, that's all for now. I hope you liked the above piece; I'm really happy with how it came together, and even happier that I got it properly proofread! My wife says hello to all of you, sends you her love, and hopes you all realize that the stories you've been reading this week owe their existence entirely to her.
> 
> They do, by the way. I wouldn't have done any of this, wouldn't have even started writing fanfiction, if she hadn't pushed me to do it.
> 
> Moving on! In tomorrow's thrilling episode, Katara finds a strange-looking crystal, a crystal that shows her such incredible things. Stay tuned!


	5. Crystals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Crown Prince Kuzon is the heir to his father's throne, but he's also the son of a boy named Zuko and girl named Katara, which is why he's also a huge dork.
> 
> Takes place in the same universe as First Kiss, Tea, and Turtleduck, along with all of the stories associated with them.
> 
> And no content warning required!

**Crystals**

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, THE CROWN PRINCE KUZON, HEIR TO THE SCARLET THRONE, WAS DAZZLED. The curator of the Royal Museum, an outrageously eccentric old woman whom Kuzon knew only as _Higashi-sensei,_ has really outdone herself. Kuzon had _watched_ the exhibit being put together, had been dragged here by Iroh, his eight-year-old youngest sibling, only the gods knew how many times, had even taken part in the special tour given to the Royal Family the night before opening day. And yet, it really did look, Agni, he almost _felt,_ like he was walking through a winding, twisting, intricately interlocked series of caves, deep within the bowels of the earth, the darkened world around him set ablaze by the seemingly endless patterns and complex colors of luminous rocks and sparkling crystals from all over the world.

            So yes, Kuzon, the twenty-one-year-old eldest son of war heroes, a young man who called the Avatar _uncle_ , was dazzled.

            Then, he looked to his right, at the beautiful young woman who was leaning close to one of the more intricate displays, snapping her fingers and bringing the flame thus produced closer to the plaque beside the crystals, and remembered – with a quick tug at the collar of his Royal Military Academy cadet uniform – that he was also nervous.

            Almost debilitatingly so.

            He shouldn’t have been. He knew that, even he didn’t feel it. He had known this the Lady Akiyama Kumiko, daughter of the Duke and Duchess Akiyama, practically his entire life. In many ways, their lives – and the lives of their families – were strangely parallel. Her clan, the Akiyama, had suffered at the hands of his grandfather, the Tyrant, just as his parents had. Their parents had all gotten married at around the same time, they had born in the same year, their brothers were classmates at the Royal Naval Academy, they even had the same number of siblings (though the Duchess Akiyama had born no twins, unlike Kuzon’s mother).

            _And yet…_

He realized with a start that she was looking at him, that there was a strange glimmer in her eyes, an odd little smile on her lips. His heart started to thud somewhere down in his boots, and he realized with a shock that his hand was rubbing at the back of his neck. He tore the hand away, clamped it hard to the hilt of his cadet’s _katana_ , and somehow resisted the impulse to shove the other hand into his pocket.

            He leaned close to the wall and discovered just how interesting a museum plaque could be.

            “You seem on edge, Kuzon.”

            He almost jumped into the air with fright. Somehow, she had teleported to a spot perilously close to him, and in his surprise he had turned and now his eyes were locked on hers and he could not look away.

            “I…um…uh…who,” he stammered out, his mouth dry, his tongue a thick lump in his throat, “me? Why would I be nervous?”

            She shrugged, that strange, soft smile still creasing her lips. “Yes, _you_ , you big goof.”

            He tried to smile, he really did. Uncle Sokka had taken him for a walk, his arm draped over Kuzon’s shoulders, his other arm gesturing madly through the air. _Listen to you Uncle Sokka, buddy_ , he had said, in his ghastly Nihongo, which he insisted on speaking even though Kuzon and his siblings all spoke both Inuktitut and Yuupik, his mother’s tribal tongue, because Uncle Sokka was convinced that his Nihongo was perfect and no one, not even Kuzon’s mother, the man’s own sister, could convince him otherwise. _Listen to me, and I will tell you all the secrets of womankind._ The lecture that had followed had been long, tangled, and had included many a confusing digression, but in the end had boiled down to _be natural_ and _be confident._

            Kuzon had found none of it helpful. He was far from confident, and his natural self was something of an awkward dork. How could that advice possibly help him?

            In a fit of exasperated madness after that lecture, he had even asked Auntie Toph for advice. Her response had included a detailed rundown of female anatomy, and the haunting admonition that he should _just strip down to his undergarments,_ because, quote, _it worked for ole’ Sparky. Every time stripped off his shirt and started a firebending lesson with Twinkletoes, I swear, your mom had to struggle not to slide out of her seat._ Kuzon had quailed before this knowledge, his parents had always been very affectionate, and he was old enough to know that he and his siblings had not been delivered by storks, but that didn’t mean he wanted it _spelled out for him._

            He had considered talking to Uncle Aang, but rejected the idea out of hand. He loved Uncle Aang, but the man was becoming more and more… _Avatar-like_ these days, which was a lot like how Kuzon imagined talking to a god would be.

            Naturally, he never once considered talking to his parents. The Fire Lord Zuko and the Fire Lady Katara would just gaze at each other across their shared desk and Kuzon would find himself wondering how he only had four siblings.

            “You know, you still haven’t answered my question.”

            Kuzon blinked, and tried to flash a confident smile. He really did. _Honest._ “Oh,” he managed, _somehow,_ “I’m not on edge. How could I be on edge?”

            Kumiko’s smile grew wider, and he started to get the sneaking suspicion that the young woman he was starting to think of as more than a friend was teasing him. “Well, you tell me! I’m not the one compulsively fiddling with my belt buckle.”

            Kuzon quickly snatched the offending hand away from the offending belt buckle. “That’s not quite fair, Kumiko. After all, you’re not wearing a belt.”

            Kuzon kept his eyes firmly locked on Kumiko’s face. There was no way he was going to let the rogues drift down the length of Kumiko’s dress. Indeed, he was so preoccupied with this effort that he almost missed the blush that bloomed on her cheeks.

            _Did I…did I…did I just successfully flirt…?_ He considered the possibility, and immediately rejected it. After all, the idea of him successfully flirting was utterly absent.

            Kumiko had turned away from him, to face a wall of intricately arranged green crystals, crystals that glowed with a strange, almost supernatural light. He watched her, as she reached up and tucked a few hairs behind her ear, and then she looked at him out of the corner of his eyes and smiled and he almost fainted.

            “These are from Ba Sing Se, are they not?”

            He turned to the crystals, leaned close, carefully examined them. “I believe so, yes, from the Crystal Catacombs.”

            “Where your mother and father fell in love, right?”

            He couldn’t help but chuckle. “Depends on who you ask, really. Everyone seems to have a different theory on where it all started.”

            “Oh? And what do Their Majesties have to say about the subject?”

            “Well, Father likes to claim it started when he first laid eyes on her, and Mother says that her journey started in the Spirit Oasis up in the North.”

            Kumiko leaned back, and turned towards him, until half her face was bathed in the soft green light of the crystals. “Did they know they loved each other, right from the start?”

            Kuzon could only shrug. “I don’t think so, no.”

            “I suppose it can take a while, sometimes, to realize the direction your heart is trying to pull you.”

            Kuzon smiled. “Yes, it can, can’t it? A whole lifetime, even.”

            “Yes, it can take what feels like a lifetime, but we…I like to think that we always get there in the end.”

            He would never be able to say what shocked him most, in the moments that followed. Was it the simple fact that she was sliding his hand into his? Or was it the way his own hand tightened around hers, as if by some primal instinct over which he had no control?

            Or was it the fact that her palm was just as clammy as his own, or that she seemed to be trembling just as badly as he was?

            Years later, they would both decide, together, that it probably didn’t really matter.

-0-

            The next morning, Kuzon was back at his desk, in the office that his parents shared. The arrangement was a simple one. His parents had a specially made desk, the size and shape of two desks place back-to-back, so that they could face each other across the surface. His own desk had been jammed up against one side, so that he face the window across the middle of the desk, his father to his left, his mother to his right. The surface of their shared workspace was piled with papers and materials, with dispatch boxes and notes and pens and pencils. His mother was sipping her tea and his father was lighting a fresh cigarette with a snap of his fingers and he was off in a world of his own, barely able to focus on the minutes from the latest debate in the Diet before him.

            “You seem in a good mood.”

            Kuzon’s head snapped up, to find his father looking at him with a bizarre smirk on his face.

            Kuzon could not remember ever having seen his father smirk. His mother, definitely, but never his father.

            “What makes you say that, Dad?”

            The Fire Lord Zuko chuckled, but it was the Fire Lady Katara who answered.

            “Because you’re humming a rather jaunty tune, my dear.”

            Kuzon blinked in surprise. “I was?”

            His mother nodded, but it was his father who answered. “It sounded a lot like _The Girls from Ba Sing Se,_ unless I’m mistaken.”

            “Care to share with the class?” his mother asked.

            Kuzon shrugged and blushed and stammered over several possible responses, before finally choking out, “Oh, nothing, just…in a good mood, I suppose…oh! I…um…I almost forgot, can we have the Akiyamas to dinner this evening?”

            His father smiled, taking a long drag from his cigarette while his mother said, “I don’t see why not. Any reason in particular?”

            Kuzon stumbled over something along the lines of how he was due back at the Academy in a week, and it had been so long, their families were all friends, surely it was as good a time as any, and _these minutes are really interesting, I should really get back to them,_ whereupon he buried his head back in his papers.

            Which was why he missed both his mother throwing a wink at his father, and his father throwing a wink right back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys, here I am again, sliding right under the wire. Shame on me. I really should've written all of these ahead of time, though, I do have a few excuses.
> 
> For one thing, I completely threw out my planned story, because like Zuko, I seem hellbent on making my life as difficult as humanly possible.
> 
> For another thing, my brother. You see, earlier this summer, my little brother gave my wife and I his Hulu password (not for free; boy got our HBO Now password in return). My wife is really bad about binge-watching shows, and since we tend to have the same taste in entertainment, I always end up watching shows over her shoulder. Today's show was Fresh Off the Boat, which is really good and really distracting.
> 
> So, really, not my fault at all.
> 
> Anyhoo, I really have to hustle to get this uploaded and submitted to the Zutara Week blog. I apologize for the lack of decent proofreading; I promise to...oh, who am I kidding? I'll never have the time to come back and fix it. Bring out the Shame Nun!
> 
> Moving on! In tomorrow's thrilling episode...oh, who am I kidding? I haven't a clue. Let's find out together! Stay tuned!


	6. Bloodbending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Katara had known how upsetting jury duty could end up being, she would've done the normal thing and tried to get out of it.
> 
> Part of the Cop/Doctor AU, which we previously saw in Letters, and in some stories from A Little Bit of This, and a Little Bit of That.
> 
> Content Warning: Well, we're talking about bloodbending. That always gets a bit...dark. But I pull it out at the end.

**Bloodbending**

“SO, YOU’RE A NURSE, I TAKE IT?”

            Katara frowned, shifting in the uncomfortable, creaky wooden chair so that she could face to her questioner. It was in the chair to her left that she found herself facing an older woman of Water Tribe extraction, somewhere around sixty-five or seventy, gnarled hands folded on top of a cane and hair the color of faded steel bound up in a neat and tidy bun at the nape of her neck. The woman’s Hangugeo came with a thick Northern accent, so Katara answered her in Inuktitut as she turned her book over and placed it, open and face-down, on her knee.

            “Oh, no,” she said with a laugh, “I wish; then people might actually listen to me. I’m just a doctor, I’m afraid. Good guess, though.”

            The old woman shrugged and picked up her cane, using the tip to point at what could only be called _Katara’s Mom Tote._ “Not really, no; I just saw the medical journals in your bag, combined that with your general air of cool competence, and pinned you down for a nurse.”

            Katara laughed and smiled and carefully place both of her hands so that the cover of her book was covered. Yes, when her and Zuko had left the house this morning, first to drop off the girls at school and then for him to drop her at the courthouse for jury duty, she had, indeed, made sure to stuff a good half-dozen medical journals into her tote. She had never actually had jury duty before, but Azula seemed to get picked every two years, like clockwork, almost, so she knew all about the long, aimless waits and how no cell phone could hope to survive, so she had packed up some journals that she needed to catch up on and felt sure that, whether she was picked or not, she would well and truly accomplish something today.

            Naturally, the journals were untouched; the trashy romance novel that she had thrown in on the off-chance that she ran out of journals to read, though? _That_ was almost finished.

            She just hoped that her daughters didn’t notice; Korra, who was now sixteen, would never let her hear the end of it, and Ursa, all of thirteen, would get judgmental.

            The old woman noticed, though. “Just thought you’d read a chapter or two, see if it was any good, before you got to work?”

            Katara blushed, somewhat embarrassed at being seen through so easily. Talking to this old woman was eerily reminiscent of talking to Gran-Gran that one time when Katara was fifteen and was trying to pretend that she wanted a firm body pillow _for the lower back support._

            “Well,” Katara said, dog-earing a page, closing the book, and stuffing it back in her tote, “you know how it is. You think, _This is it, no work, no kids, nothing to do, I can get so much done!_ ”

            The old woman giggled like a woman half her age. “And then you sit yourself on the couch, eat ice cream, and watch soap operas all day.” She shook her head, mouth creased in a wide, gleaming smile. “You have children, then?”

            “Oh, yes, two-“

            She never got to finish the sentence, never even got to finish talking to the old woman, never even got to learn her name. It was at that exact moment that a door slammed open, somewhere in the empty, cavernous courtroom, and a bailiff the size of a house bellowed. “ _All rise!”_

            And they rose, the judge nodded at them, nodded at the prosecutor and the defense counsel, and then they all sat back down and jury selection began in earnest.

-0-

            It was a good hour before one of the attorneys got to Katara. It was the defense counsel, unless she missed her guess. Ever since Zuko had made detective, she’d met quite a few prosecutors, and none of them had ever owned a suit that fit.

            The dapper, well-put-together young man standing before the box, a few notecards in his hand and gel gleaming in his hair, had a suit that fit. It wasn’t a nice suit by any means, he was a Legal Aid attorney, after all, but it did fit.

            The mother in Katara approved of the fitted suit. Of course, the mother in Katara also noticed that his tie was slightly askew, and the cuffs of his shirt were a bit worn, but what can one do? No one’s perfect.

            “Hello, Juror Number…” The young man checked his notecards, looked up at Katara, and flashed a smile that showed off the hundreds of _won_ his parents had spent on his teeth. “Nine, correct?”

            Katara bowed her head. “That’s me.”

            “Excellent! Can you state your occupation for the record, please?”

            “I’m a doctor, young man.”

            “Young man! That tells me that you’re a mother. Is this true?”

            “Yes. I have two teenaged girls.”

            “Good thing you’re a doctor, then. Now, I’m looking at your information here, and it says that your husband is a police officer. Is that correct?”

            Katara’s right hand flew to her left and started compulsively fiddling with her wedding band. It was a nervous tic that she had never done anything to combat, though she had somehow managed to stop herself from reaching for her mother’s betrothal necklace, the necklace that now hung from her eldest daughter’s neck. “That’s correct, yes.” She paused, frowned; she didn’t like the way this conversation was going, but she liked her confused tone of voice even less. She took a moment to compose herself, and continued in her _Doctor Voice._ “My husband is a homicide detective for the RCPD.”

            “Excellent, excellent, it’s so good to see when the information the State provides to us poor Legal Aid goons proves to be reliable.”

            “Objection, Your Honor!” the prosecutor, a well-put together middle-aged woman with her hair tied back in a long, neat ponytail, called out. “Is the counsel for the defense conducting a jury selection, or a cross-examination?”

            The judge, an older man with a neat goatee, looked at the defense attorney over his glasses. “The prosecution has a point, young man. Where is this going?”

            The lawyer flashed a smile and bowed his head. “I’m getting to that, Your Honor. Just give me a few more minutes.”

            The judge sighed and turned back to his notepad. “A few more minutes, and not a second more, sir.”

            “Of course, Your Honor. Now, Juror Number Nine,” he continued, rounding on Katara with a heel-spin worthy of a member of the Fire Nation Royal Guard, “do you know about this case?”

            Katara looked down at her notepad. “Just what I’ve heard today and what I’ve seen on the news.”

            “Then you know that my client stands accused of murdering her sister with bloodbending.”

             There was the word, the word that had been stalking Katara ever since she was a little girl, ever since her waterbending had begun to manifest itself, ever since Gran-Gran had sat her down, clasped her hands, and made an eight-year-old girl swear, _on her very soul,_ to never do one thing, and one thing only. _You’re a strong girl, my dear, and you’re going to grow into a brave, strong woman, one of the finest waterbenders that has ever been, but you must promise, right here, right now, to never, **ever,** bloodbend._

Time had changed the world, and the Water Tribes, both North and South, had not been immune. So had much had changed, mostly for the better, but one thing had not altered, and that was the taboo against bloodbending, something still used by the mothers of the Southern Water Tribes to frighten their children at night. _Behave, or else._

_Behave, or the bloodbenders will get you._

“Yes,” Katara said, eyes firmly locked on her notepad. “Yes, I know that.”

            “Are you a waterbender, Juror Number Nine?”

            Katara took a deep breath in, a deep breath out, and wondered why this smooth young man in the frayed suit was bothering. Like all benders, she was registered with the government, and she had no doubt that that information was on the notecards in the young man’s hands.

            “Yes, I am a waterbender.”

            “Then, Juror Number Nine, answer me this: As a waterbender, and as a person of Water Tribe ancestry, can you promise, beyond a reasonable doubt, to carefully consider the facts of the case, calmly and rationally?”

            Katara and her husband were not caricatures out of one of her trashy romance novels. There were many differences between them, innumerable sometimes, it seemed. But on the big things, the important things? The core facets of their personalities, the core tenants of their beliefs? They were one.

            Which was why Katara took a deep breath and told the young man the truth.

-0-

            “So,” Zuko said, “I take it you’re not going to be on the jury?”

            Katara shook her head. “No, Zuko, I’m not going to be on the jury.”

            They were sitting on a bench outside of another courtroom, holding hands, just one floor down from the one Katara had just left. Her husband was testifying in court that afternoon, which was why he was in his best suit, face freshly saved, hair neatly trimmed, shined and polished badge prominent on his belt. She had made sure his tie was neat and straight that morning, but somehow during the day, he had managed to get it slanting off to the side again, and it took all Katara’s willpower not to reach out and fix it right then and there.

            She loved it when he put on a nice suit. If she wasn’t so upset, she would be dragging him into the nearest broom closet.

            “It was the bloodbending thing, wasn’t it?”

            Katara groaned and laid her head on his shoulder, nuzzling and shifting until she had found her perfect spot. There was a faint whiff of cigarette smoke wafting off him. He had quit when she got pregnant with Korra, but public speaking made him nervous enough that, anytime he had to go into court, he would bum a smoke off a handy bailiff.

            She didn’t mind. If anything, at that moment, she found the hint of smoke comforting, as if they were once again curled up on the shoddy couch in her and Toph’s old apartment, passing a cigarette back and forth and drinking cheap beer while watching trashy rom-coms.

            “Yes,” she admitted, closing her eyes and drifting softly into the memory, “it was the bloodbending thing. Just…all I could picture was Gran-Gran’s face, the deadly seriousness of her voice. And then I was thinking of the victim, that poor young woman, dead because a boy liked her more than he liked her sister, and I…you know how bloodbending works, right?”

            Zuko nodded. “You’ve described it to me a few times. It doesn’t sound pleasant.”

            “It’s not. You can…you can feel _everything_. Every nook and cranny of a person’s body, you can feel, you can practically _touch_. It’s as exhilarating as it is awful.”

            “But you’ve used it.”

            “Of course, I have. I’m a doctor, and it’s not the Dark Ages anymore. Bloodbending is a vital tool in the modern medical arsenal. It’s saved countless lives over the years and will go on to save countless more. Gods, I used it to save a stroke victim just last week! Without bloodbending, we would’ve had to run that poor old man through countless tests and we would’ve had to waste precious time and only La knows if we would’ve been able to save him, or what would’ve been left by the time we had.”

            “In other words, it’s a miracle of the bending arts.”

            “Yes. I believe that with every fiber of my being.”

            “But you can also use it to kill people in horrific ways.”

            Katara screwed her eyes ever more tightly shut. “Yes, you can. Have you ever seen it? The aftermath?”

            She didn’t have to look at her husband to see the distant, cold look in his eyes. “Once, when I was just a patrolman, fresh from the Academy. It was…I don’t think I’ll ever forget what I saw. It was the first and only time I’ve ever thrown up at a crime scene.”

            “Yeah…it’s horrible…”

            There was a pause, and then Zuko was releasing her hand and pulling away, turning to face her. He took her hands in his and held on tight and said, “Katara, sweetheart, my love, look at me.”

            She opened her eyes and looked at him. The care and love in his eyes made her fall for him all over again.

            “This is about Ursa, isn’t it?”

            She nodded. “Yes, it is, it’s about our daughter.” Their beautiful little thirteen-year-old girl, who took after her father’s side so strongly in looks, the opposite of Korra, who took after Katara, and yet, it was Korra who was the firebender.

            It was Ursa who was the waterbender.

            “Have you talked to her about bloodbending?”

            Katara shook her head. “No, I haven’t. I should have, but I haven’t. I just…I didn’t want to frighten her. You remember what it’s like, when your bending first starts to manifest and you get so scared, because everyone is telling you what not to do and how this is dangerous and that is dangerous and you go through that period where you curse the gods for this so-called _gift._ ”

            Zuko chuckled. “You and me, maybe. Azula was super into it from day one.”

            Katara rolled her eyes. “Of _course_ she was. Your sister doesn’t know the meaning of such mortal, pedestrian things as _fear._ ”

            “Yeah…but you have to talk to Ursa.”

            “I know.”

            “I mean…you’ve told her about all the other dangers, we have to. You think I wanted do it, when I had to sit Korra down and tell her how dangerous firebending can be, not just to those around you, but to yourself? You think I enjoyed frightening her like that?”

            “No, you didn’t. You were so upset.”

            “Of course I was. But…I still have to do it, just like you have to, when Ursa was a little girl.”

            “I didn’t tell her everything…”

            “No, you didn’t, but you have to, dear heart.”

            “But…but what if she asks if I use bloodbending? I’ll have to tell her the truth, we swore never to lie to our children, unless it was the Tooth Fairy or Mother Winder or the Solstice Jackalope, those aren’t lies, I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m word vomiting, aren’t I?”

            “There’s a reason you married me.”

            She smiled. “Yes, many, and not just the one in your pants. But…I just…I’ll have to tell her the truth and…what if she’s scared of me?”

            “She won’t be scared of you. She’s a total _Mommy’s Girl_ , she loves you!”

            Katara poked him. “You’re one to talk. Korra is an utter Daddy’s Girl.”

            “Yeah, well, that’s the way it is, sometimes. Seriously, though, you _must_ talk to her, I know you, _I believe in you,_ you’ll find a way to do it right. You won’t frighten her or give her nightmares, but she has to learn about this, she has to understand what it is and how to avoid it if she wants, and she needs to hear it from you.”

            She smiled, leaned forward, rested her forehead against his. “You really do love me, don’t you?”

            He smiled right back. “More and more every day.”

            “I love you more.”

            “It’s not a contest.”

            “Says you.”

            And then, naturally, she kissed him.

-0-

            Ursa’s older sister had soccer practice after school, which meant that she was standing out front of the school, talking to her best friend Ming, when her mother pulled up to the curb. Ursa was happy, but also surprised; because her parents couldn’t predict their schedule that day, she had been expecting her namesake, her _O-bāchan,_ to pick her up, hopefully with Auntie Zula, because Auntie Zula always brought her ice cream. Ursa liked to think of herself as a big girl, she was, after all, _thirteen,_ but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get giddy at the thought of ice cream.

            But it was Mom, and she looked serious, so Ursa resigned herself to not getting any ice cream, gave Ming a big hug, and hopped in the car, gleefully taking the front seat because Korra wasn’t there so _nyah._

            “Hey Mom,” she said, tossing her school bag into the backseat and giving her mother a kiss on the cheek. “How’s Dad?”

            Katara smiled and reached out to ruffle her daughter’s hair before putting the car into Drive. “Your father is just fine, he’s actually back at the house, waiting for us.”

            “So, you didn’t get picked for the jury today?”

            “No, I didn’t get picked for the jury.”

            “Oh…Ming said that you might be getting picked for that horrible bloodbending trial that’s in the news.”

            Her mother didn’t answer at first, but Ursa didn’t really notice the pause or the look on her mother’s face. She was, after all, only thirteen.

            “Well…I almost did, but the defense attorney didn’t like me, so now we’re going to go get ice cream.”

            Ursa lit up at that. “ _Really?!_ But…it’s not my birthday or anything…”

            Her mother smiled as she navigated her way out of the school parking lot and out into traffic. “Can’t a Mom get her little girl ice cream just because?”

            “Well, _no,_ because I’m not _little_ and you’re always saying that ice cream is a treat and too much of it is bad for you.”

            “That’s true…not that it stops your _O-bāchan_ or your aunt from getting it for you and your sister whenever you two want.”

            Ursa put on her most innocent face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mom?”

            Her mother rolled her eyes. “ _Uh huh._ But no, it was a long day, and I want ice cream, so we’re going to get ice cream.”

            Ursa shrugged. The logic seemed sound enough to her. “Okay. And then what?”

            Her mother took a deep breath, and let it out.

            “And then we’re going to have a rather serious talk.”

            That let the wind right out of Ursa’s sails. “Oh…it’s not going to be about sex, is it?”

            Her mother’s eyes flew wide as she burst into laughter. “ _What?!_ Why would it be about that? I’ve already had that talk with you. _Several of them._ ”

            “I remember.” Ursa had cursed being the daughter of a doctor that day. “Still, you said there were things you couldn’t tell me, because I wouldn’t understand until I was older, so it’s not those things, right?”

            “…no, it’s not those things.”

            “Oh, okay, then it can’t be that bad, can it?”

            Her mother smiled. “No, maybe not.”

            And Ursa was right. It was kind of scary, but it wasn’t as bad as the day her mother got out _The Book_ and walked her through the male and female anatomy, during which lecture Ursa was old enough to put two-and-two together and realize that, horror of horrors, her parents had had sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, here I am again, sliding under the wire. Blergh. I swear to God, this better not happen again tomorrow.
> 
> Now, to get this up and uploaded and submitted, and then to go be cute and make out with my wife, because the kid's in bed! Muah hahahaha!
> 
> Moving on! In tomorrow's thrilling episode, we return to my ideal version of canon for the date that wasn't supposed to be a date that was mentioned in Turtleduck. Stay tuned!


	7. Element Swap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the cusp of what would one day be known as the date that wasn't supposed to be a date, Katara and Zuko find themselves trying to figure out why they're so damn nervous.
> 
> Part of the same continuity as First Kiss, Tea, Turtleduck, and Crystals.
> 
> Slight Content Warning: A few instances of adult language are sprinkled throughout.

**Element Swap**

ZUKO WAS NOT HAVING THE BEST OF MORNINGS. For one thing, he hadn’t slept very well the night before. Well…as a rule, Zuko didn’t sleep well, but for once, it hadn’t been because of bad dreams or a general feeling of dread; _those,_ he was used to. An ever-present sense of doom was his natural state of being, after all. No, this time, he had tossed and turned because he was, well, _nervous._ He kept telling himself that he shouldn’t be nervous, hadn’t he been spending time nearly every day with Katara for a whole two months now? This was just…them thanking each other for all the help they’d been exchanging, for all the laughs and the smiles and the joy and for that time Zuko had put on his Blue Spirit mask and saved Appa from the Dai Li. Sure, it was supposed to be somewhere nice for once, and not just some random noodle shop, but what was the big deal about that?

            _Nothing, that’s what. Nothing at all, Zuko, you monumental idiot, **nothing.**_

            Then, when he woke up, he had found himself still living in a world in which he was a wanted fugitive hunkered down in a tiny, shabby apartment in the Fire Quarter – the part of Ba Sing Se’s Lower Ring that had housed people of Fire Nation descent for eons – while all around the rings of forts that circled the Great City, the world went ever more mad. Naturally, this had depressed him, and not even a morning round at the nearby firebending field had brightened him up.

            Thus, his stomach was still twisted up in knots of – to him – inexplicable nervousness by the time he headed in to work, which, combined with that familiar sense of doom and his usual morning blues, left him in a rather black mood. Spending the next few hours with his arms elbow-deep in a tube of hot water, washing dishes, didn’t help.

            Oh, and then there was the fact that he was probably going to kill his uncle.

            “Listen, my boy,” Uncle was saying, sipping a cup of tea while leaning up against the doorway that led into the cramped space where Zuko washed dishes, “all I’m saying is that a young lady appreciates it when a young man puts some effort into his appearance.”

            Zuko frowned, the tip of his tongue popping out of the side of his mouth as he worked at a particularly stubborn bit of food. “And I’m telling you that it’s not that kind of evening.”

            He didn’t have to look at his uncle to know that the old man was rolling his eyes. “An evening comes in many shades, _Oi,_ but they are all but variations on the same tune.”

            Zuko groaned and counted to ten, distracting himself by puffing a stray piece of hair out of his eyes. His hair had grown long enough in the six months since he’d shorn off his topknot to be tied back into a short ponytail, but no matter how hard he tried, a few strands always escaped confinement. _Figures that I can’t even tie a ponytail right._ “ _Oji,_ what does that even _mean?_ ”

            His uncle sighed and made clucking noises with his tongue. “If I have to explain it, then you have not yet reached the point at which you can understand it.”

            _One-two-three-four-five-six-_ “Okay, _Oji,_ whatever you say.”

            That brightened his uncle right up. “That’s the spirit, my boy! Just start listening to your wise old _Oji_ , and you’ll never regret it.”

            _-twenty-one-twenty-two-twenty-three-twenty-_ “Is that what brought you in to bother me at work today, _Oji?_ Reminding me of how I should listen to you more often?”

            His uncle laughed. “Oh, no, _Oi,_ I can tell you that at home and never even have to put pants on.” _-thirty-nine-forty-forty-one-forty-two-forty-_ “I came here today to take you back to the apartment.”

            Zuko shrugged. “So, to score free tea off Endo-san, then?” _Endo-san_ being Zuko’s boss and the owner of the restaurant. Zuko half-suspected that the man knew exactly who he and Uncle were. “Well, don’t let me hold you up, I’m sure Endo-san already has the Pai Sho board set up.”

            “Oh, I won’t be playing Pai Sho with my dear friend Endo today, young man.”

            “Well, then I don’t know what you hope to accomplish by annoying me for the next few hours.” The stubborn chunk of food finally dislodged, allowing Zuko to dunk the dish in the cold-water basin a few times, put it on the drying rack, and move on to the next. “My shift doesn’t end until the Hour of the Goat.”

            “That’s where you’re wrong, young man. Your shift ends now.”

            “No,” Zuko said through gritted teeth, taking his frustrations out on an unlucky bowl, “it doesn’t.”

            “Yes, Tsukuru,” which was Zuko’s alias, “it _does._ I’ve already cleared it with my good friend Endo. We’re going to leave here and head directly to the bathhouse, where you’re going to get a good bath, a massage, and a haircut. We’re not going to touch the length, of course; I think that ponytail style suits you nicely. However, we do need to do something about those split ends…”

            Zuko realized with a shock that he had arrived at a hundred in his mental count and started over. _One-two-three-four-_ “Well, that’s just silly, _Oji._ Why would I need to do all that?”

            “Surely you want to look your best for your date with the Lady Katara.”

            _Gah!_ “Gods-dammit, _Oji,_ how many times do I have to tell you that it’s _NOT A FUCKING DATE?!_ ”

            His uncle just made a tutting sound. “Such language, _Oi._ Do you kiss the Lady Katara with that mouth?”

            Zuko rounded on his uncle, trying not to think of how ridiculous he probably looked, what with soap suds dripping from his fingers. “ _Again, I’M NOT KISSING HER!”_

Uncle just tapped a finger to his nose. “But you want to.”

            _Desperately._ “ _No!_ ” _It’s all I think about sometimes. “_ It’s not like that!”

            His uncle just chuckled, setting down his now-empty teacup and pulling out his pipe and tobacco pouch. “Be that as it may, you still need to look your best.”

            “I can do that after work,” Zuko muttered, turning back to the soap bath and shoving his hands in, imagining that the spoons he was scrubbing were his uncle’s neck.

            “I see. And when was your date again?”

            “At the Hour of the Rooster.” There was a beat. _Wait a minute…GODS-DAMMIT._ “ _And it’s NOT A DATE!_ ”

            “A thousand utterances of the word will not turn a hill into a mountain, you know.”

            _If you kill him, you’ll feel bad. If you kill him, you’ll feel bad. If you kill him-_ “Whatever. Point is, I’ll have of time to get ready.”

            “Less than an hour to get ready?!” Uncle paused to light his freshly packed pipe. “Don’t talk crazy, my boy. No nephew of mine is going to go on a date after less than an hour’s preparation.”

            “For the last time, _Oji,_ it is _NOT A FUCKING DATE,_ and I am going to _finish my gods-damn SHIFT!”_

            Naturally, ten minutes later, Zuko was thanking Endo-san for the early release and trailing his uncle out the back door.

            Just as naturally, as soon as he got outside, he lit a cigarette, stuck his hands deep in his work apron’s pockets, and grumbled under his breath all the way to the bathhouse.

-0-

            As Katara sat in front of the vanity, inside her enormous room – one of several she had, _somehow_ – deep in the Imperial Palace of Ba Sing Se, she discovered that the things she wanted that afternoon were very simple and, in her rarely humble opinion, not all that far-fetched. She wanted a vanity that was not made of luxury wood polished to a brilliant sheen, she wanted brushes that were not inlaid with enough precious jewels that each one was worth more than all the valuables in her hometown _combined,_ she wanted Sokka back from seeing their father out at Chameleon Bay, she wanted to know how Aang and Toph were, and she wanted very much to brush her own damn hair.

            Sadly, as she watched the lady’s maid who had been assigned to her when her and her friends arrived at the Palace three months before pick up one of those jewel-encrusted brushes, she began to wonder which of those things would be the most difficult to attain that evening.

            “You know, Wenling,” she said, putting on her best smile while picking up another, to her eyes identical, brush, “I’m perfectly capable of brushing my own hair.”

            She watched through the mirror as Wenling gave a polite bow of her head, the woman’s perennial _servant’s smile_ never wavering so much as an inch. “Of that, I have no doubt, my lady. However, it is my duty to ensure that your ladyship always looks your absolute best, _especially_ when your ladyship is heading out for a romantic evening with a young man. In such a situation, it would be negligent of me to shirk from my duty.”

            Katara ignored the nagging little voice at the back of her head, the one that Zuko had helped train to translate _Servant Speak_ , as it whispered that it was pretty sure that Wenling had just insulted her. _She probably did, but whatever._ “It’s not a romantic evening, Wenling; it’s just a quiet outing with an old friend.”

            Once again, Wenling’s expression never so much as _twitched._ “Well, if that’s the case, my lady, perhaps one of the regular day dresses would be sufficient…”

            _What?!_ “Oh…well…um…” Katara fought down the blush – _she hoped_ – and waved the point away. “Well, you are correct, a lady must always look her best, even on a…um… _quiet outing with an old friend._ ”

            Wenling did not so much as pop an eyebrow. “Of course, my lady.” She gave a quick, shallow bow, rose, and stepped into position directly behind Katara. “Now,” she continued, picking up a some of Katara’s long, curly hair and starting to run the brush slowly, gently, through it, “how would you like your hair done? And has your ladyship made a final decision as to your dress for the evening?”

            Katara closed her eyes and started counting to ten. Once she reached ten, she decided that perhaps a hundred would be more helpful.

-0-

            By the time Zuko and his uncle finally made it back to their apartment, Zuko felt a lot like how he imagined a plucked pig-chicken felt. He had bathed and steamed until he could feel pores he had forgotten he even had open. He had been shaved and his hair had been trimmed and washed and done up in a neater, more immaculate form of his usual short ponytail, and his skin almost seemed to _gleam_ in the afternoon sun. He felt a good ten pounds lighter than when he had woken up, his freshly cleaned and clipped fingernails felt bruised and battered, and his ears were still ringing from the raunchy conversations Uncle had insisted on having with his numerous _old man friends_ at the bathhouse.

            All that said, though, when he finally got a look at himself in the small, dull, badly cracked mirror bolted directly into the wall in what passed for he and his uncle’s closet (since they shared a room and had to use the communal bathroom on the first floor), he had to admit that he did, indeed, look like a million _yen_.

            And Zuko would know. When he had been nine, he had actually _seen_ a million _yen._

            “Well?” Uncle said, standing in the kitchen (since they didn’t actually _have_ a bedroom, or any rooms, now that Zuko thought about it, the apartment was all one room; bedtime meant rolling out two _tatami_ mats on the floor and bunching two threadbare blankets into makeshift pillows) as he made some tea and puffed on his pipe. “Was I right, Zuko, or was I right?”

            Zuko groaned and rolled his eyes. “Surely you’re going to get tired one day of hearing me tell you that you were right about something.”

            To that, Uncle didn’t answer; he just laughed, which, Zuko admitted to himself, was fair.

            “So,” Zuko said, walking across the room into the “kitchen,” settling himself on a rickety, rather crooked stool and lighting himself a cigarette, “now that you’ve given your doll a makeover, are you going to accessorize it, too?”

            Uncle frowned at the leaves he had just taken out of a clay, rather battered jar, bringing his palm up to his nose to give them a sniff. “Of course; one should never leave a job half-finished. Zuko, do these leaves smell funny to you?”

            Zuko rolled his eye. “Why would you even bother to answer me that question, _Oji_?”

            His uncle shrugged and gave the leaves another sniff. “In the hopes that, through repeated suggestion, you will eventually realize the error of your ways with regards to the nectar of life that is tea.”

            “Wait,” Zuko said, pointing his cigarette at his uncle, “I thought _a thousand utterances of the word will not turn a hill into a mountain_ , or something?”

            “It will not turn a hill into a mountain, but it can help a hill that is actually a mountain realize that it was a mountain all along. Oh, and your clothes for this evening are in that satchel on the dining table.”

            After staring at his uncle, mouth wide open, for what felt like a long time, Zuko stubbed out his cigarette, slid off the pathetic excuse for a stool, and headed for the _dining table,_ which was also his and Katara’s work table, he and his uncle’s night stand, and possessor of four legs of varying lengths, no one length repeated twice.

-0-

            “You don’t enjoy any of this, do you, my lady?”

            Katara frowned, running her hands down the skirt of her dress for the thousandth time and struggling with the urge to reach up and fiddle with her hair. Wenling had done a perfect job, of course; the young woman always did. But Katara hadn’t done it _herself,_ and everything about that fact bothered her.

            “Well,” Katara said, skootching across the bench and lifting one of the curtains that covered the carriage’s windows, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I don’t enjoy _any_ of it. I enjoy the food, I enjoy the hot running water, I _definitely_ enjoyed the dress selection you presented me with this morning…”

            She trailed off, not bothering to utter the word _but,_ knowing that Wenling was perfectly capable of supplying it herself.

            The truth was, she hated _all of this._ Even the selection of dresses, while fun to play around with, had felt oppressive and demeaning somehow. There were times when she felt almost as if she could _feel_ the weight of the Palace pressing down on her. The corridors were wider than any street she had ever known, her bedroom alone was big enough to fit three or four of the hut she had grown up in, gods, even the tables seemed larger than most pack animals she had known, and yet she still felt hemmed in. Closed off.

            _Claustrophobic._

            “I guess I just feel out of my element,” she finally said, letting the curtain fall and turning back to Wenling, who sat on the bench across from her. “This is…it’s not just that I don’t know this world, it’s that I never even imagined that a world like this _existed._ ” _And Zuko **grew up** in a world like this. I didn’t know his world existed, and he didn’t know mine existed. It’s like we grew up on two entirely separate planets, part of two completely different species, and now we’ve…we’ve…it’s like we’ve **swapped elements,** or something. As if I’ve started bending fire and he’s started bending water, and now we’re stuck trying to figure it out…together, I guess…yeah…together…_

Katara couldn’t quite explain why that thought made her feel so at peace.

            Wenling gave a nod that felt wiser than her years (Katara reckoned that the woman wasn’t much older than she was). “It can be… _overwhelming,_ for those who weren’t born to it.”

            Katara arched an eyebrow. “It never feels overwhelming to you, Wenling?”

            Her lady’s maid gave a soft, demure sort of shrug. “Not really, no, my lady. Of course, I don’t _live_ here; I just work here.”

            “Servants don’t have quarters at the Palace?”

            For a moment, Katara could’ve sworn that an actual _human emotion_ flickered across her lady’s maid’s face. “Not in any part of the Palace you’ve seen, begging my lady’s pardon.”

            Katara smiled and looked down at nails that had been manicured, a process she hadn’t even heard of before setting foot in the Northern Water Tribe six months before. _Though,_ she couldn’t help but think, running a thumb over one of her palms, _the calluses remain._

            “Do they still think I’m just an uncouth barbarian, Wenling?”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about, my lady.”

            Katara smiled and shook her head. “Don’t lie to me, Wenling. My Putonghua may not be the best, but I don’t need it to see the smirks on some of the courtiers’ faces.” _And some of the servants, too._

            Wenling seemed to _weigh_ her answer before she replied. “Not as much as when you first arrived, my lady. Your manners, your Putonghua, even your ability to quote Confucius have markedly improved. At least two noblewomen have asked me if I know where they can find your tutor.”

            Katara couldn’t help but laugh. “They think I have a tutor?”

            “They assume so, and I imagine that they’re not wrong.”

            “What do they want to do, buy my tutor away from me?”

            “I imagine that would be the end goal, my lady.”

            “Well, they can’t. He doesn’t work for money, anyways.”

            “No, my lady, I imagine that he works for your smiles.”

            Katara’s head shot up, her eyes wide. “What…what do you mean by that?”

            This time, there was no mistaking it: Wenling had an honest-to-La human expression on her face. “I find it hard to believe that you don’t know, my lady. Ah! Here we are, the Fire Quarter. And unless I am profoundly mistaken,” she continued, leaning forward to lift a curtain and look out a window, “your young tutor seems to have beaten us here.”

            Katara’s heart moved from the pit of her stomach up into her throat, its place in her gut quickly replaced with butterflies. “Well…I mean… _of course_ , why wouldn’t he be? He’s a gentleman.”

            “Of that, I have no doubt, my lady. Enjoy your evening. We’ll be right here to pick you up at the Hour of the Rat.”

            And with that, after fighting down the thousand-thousandth urge to fiddle with her hair and managing to only spend a solid minute smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from her skirt, she stepped out of the carriage and into a comfortably warm summer evening.

-0-

            “Now, young man, I really must insist that you stop fiddling with your belt.”

            “I can’t help it, _Oji,_ I’m nervous.”

            “Yes, I would imagine so; only a fool would be immune to an attack of nerves on the cusp of spending an evening with such a beautiful young lady.”

            “That…by the _gods_ , _Oji,_ that’s got nothing to do with it.”

            “Oh? Because everything from your facial expression to the number of cigarettes you’ve smoked says otherwise.”

            “I just… _gods_ , _Oji,_ do you live to torment me?”

            “It’s what gets me up in the morning.”

            “ _Grr._ Look, okay, I’m excited to see Katara, but has it occurred to you that theoutfit you have me in is eerily reminiscent of a Royal Army dress uniform?”

            “I’ve always felt that red was a good color on you, _Oi._ ”

            “Don’t you think someone will _notice?_ _Oh, look, there goes a young Fire Nation man, he looks an awful lot like a soldier._ ”

            “Considering how the Fire Quarter is awash in draft dodgers and deserters and dissidents, I think you’ll be just fine. Surely, you’ve noticed that most of the young men here are dressed in bits and pieces of Fire Nation uniforms? You could probably raise an entire army, just from this part of the city.”

            “I had noticed, and that’s fine for them, but I thought our goal was to not stand out, or had you forgotten that? _Again?_ ”

            “I’m quite certain that I have no idea what you mean, _Oi_.”

            “Don’t do that, _Oji._ ”

            “Do what?”

            “Put on an enigmatic face while puffing your pipe, hoping that I’ll get so exasperated that I’ll give up and concede the argument.”

            “One, for there to be an argument, both sides need an equal chance of success. Two, why would I stop, when it works so well?”

            “…you’re infuriating, you know that, right, _Oji_?”

            “I love you, too, Zuko.”

            “Not in public, _Oji_.”

            “The love, or your name?”

            “…why do I put up with you, again?”

            “Because I distract you from your nerves on the eve of your first ever date?”

            “I…it’s…oh, never mind.”

            “Honestly, you worry too much. Once people see how radiant the Lady Katara looks in her dress, they’ll forget your very existence.”

            “Well, naturally, but still…wait…how do you know what Katara is wearing?”

            “Because she’s climbing out of that carriage right over there as we speak.”

            “…oh…”

            Iroh smiled, patted himself on the belly, patted his nephew on the back, wished him luck, and headed off towards the dilapidated little teahouse next door to the neighborhood fire temple, there to spend his evening sipping tea, drinking _sake_ , puffing on his pipe, and swapping lies with the other old men, whistling _The Girls from Ba Sing Se_ the whole way there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Iroh, you sly dog. What are you up to? A lot, no doubt, most of which even he's not sure of. That's our Iroh.
> 
> So, full disclosure, I am...not a hundred percent happy with this story. But when you've got a deadline, sometimes it's best to just put a period on it, submit it, and trust in your readers. I have never been a good judge of my own work; at best, I end up with work that I'm tolerably okay with, but I can't honestly say that I actually love anything I've ever written. A lot of it, I don't even particularly like. It's one of the shitty things about being a creator; it's difficult not to see all the twists and turns, all the things that didn't make it or ended up on the cutting room floor, all the versions of the story that you deleted or edited out of existence. Like, there's a good, I dunno, I could probably make a whole other, full-length fic out of what got cut from Romance of the Four Nations, which is pretty solid, you should scope it out.
> 
> Anyhoo, the important thing is that, the more I type this note, the more I like this piece. I don't love it, I'm not exactly happy with it, but it's cute and it's fun and it's got Iroh in it. This is definitely an AU I'm going to explore further.
> 
> Because, if this week has accomplished anything, it's reminded me of how much I fucking love writing, especially writing for you guys. Pushing me into doing Zutara Week is one of the best decisions my wife ever made, in a lifetime of good decisions (except for that time that she married me, but hey, that one's on her). There is just so much I want to share with you guys, and not just Zutara. 
> 
> Actually, while I've got you here...what AUs or story ideas or what-have-you would like to see more of? Shoot me an Ask over on Tumblr (kangaroo2010) or hit me up on Twitter (@Historybuff2013), or mention something in the comments. Don't PM me; I suck at checking my PMs. Like, I'm just awful at it.
> 
> Before we leave for the day, few quick things about the story. Oji is Japanese for uncle, and oi is Japanese for nephew. I'm rather enamored of the idea of the different nations speaking different languages, and in my mind, the Fire Nation speaks Nihongo, which is the Japanese word for...well...Japanese. Also, I tend to stretch out the time frame; for me, the canon story takes place over two years, rather than six months. The Siege of the North happened six months before this (thus why it's summer), and the Gaang kicked Long Feng's ass (or so they thought) about two months ago, which is why Toph tried to go see her parents, Sokka went to see his dad, and Aang went off to the Eastern Air Temple to unlock chakras with Guru Pathik. Katara's been alone in Ba Sing Se for most of that time...
> 
> Except for when she's been with Zuko. ;-)
> 
> Moving on...that's it! We're done! That's all she wrote for Zutara Week 2018, guys! But stay tuned to this channel; there'll be a lot more coming your way! See you soon!
> 
> And I love you, babe!


End file.
